Major structural rust problem! HELP!

[Murph]

Driving home this avo in the zed, some little wanker on a bike rode out in front of me. I hit the brakes suddenly and the car swerved hard right and locked what I think was the front right wheel.

Now the car pulls to the right reasonably heavily and when I apply the brakes it pulls very hard to the right and you get sorta shhh shhh shhh shhh shhh scrubbing sound from the front right wheel.

Anyhow, I've just had a look under there expecting a problem with the suspension or brakes and found something much much worse. The chassis rail on the right hard side where the radius rod connects to it, has totally seperated from the body!

It's all quite rusted and is displaced about 6mm or so from where it should be.

Looking down at the chassis rail in the engine bay it's quite buckled. The reason I had never seen the rust before is because the car has a fresh layer of tar sound deadening (by the previous owner). Now I know why. :mad:

What can be done? Can it be cut out and replaced? How many limbs am I going to have to cut off to pay for it?

[Alfadog]

:tapemouth :tapemouth :tapemouth :mad: :mad: :sleepy: :ermm: :mad:

Never had to do anything like that, but I can tell you now it won't be cheap mate...

[2ManyZs]

If the right side rail is rusted so badly that it separated, you've got a ton of problems. If it has rusted to that extent, you better check the inner fender and firewall area as well. You should be able to buy new frame rails to replace the rusted one, but you'll end up having to patch the T/C rod mount back in if the plate that holds it on the inside of the rail is rusted and compromised.

If one rail is that bad, you might as well go ahead and replace both frame rails. It's not going to be cheap, there's quite a bit of labor involved if you have someone else do it for you.:disappoin

[St.stephen]

sounds like some of the cars I come across here in jersey. As I have posted before, it's time to take the plates off the car, cancel the insurance and get to work.

Gathering from what you described that tc rod bracket ties into the firewall, inner fender well, and frame rail. The frame rail kits are available and beleive it or not aren;t that difficult to install IF the firewall and inner fender well aren't swiss cheese. Generally something like this gurantees other problems and you won;t know until you get the undercoating off to fully see.

I suggest going over the whole car with a scraper and a screwdriver. start scraping off the flaky undercoating that comes off easily. The with the screwdriver, start poking. It can be scary to be poking solid metal and then all of a sudden the scredriver goes through. Putting the car on stands (under the front crossmember) remove the wheels and start on where the inner fender well ties into the frame rail and firewall/toe board and work your way around the front of the car. This will give you a good assessment of how bad the cancer has spread.

I have one of the cases in my garage currently.

[SHOTIME]

Where are the frame rails available from? I have the beginning of the problem he had and I might as well take care of the whole thing. I'm already replacing damn near everything but the roof, what's a little extra. Thank God I can weld.

[MDyer]

Just jacked up my 73 to rob the transmission, and the frame rail is now through the passenger floor pan.::dead:

Rust like I've never seen...

[Murph]

Glad I'm not the only one. Pity I can't weld and I have no money to pay someone else to do it atm.

[Alfadog]

It's everywhere it's everywhere!!! :(

[Murph]

I've just spent the past hour scraping away at the sound deadeder. Basically there's a 50cm long section of the chassis rail that has broken away from the rest of the rail and body at both ends. This section goes from the front of the radius rod braket back to the bottom front of the drivers foot well (RH drive).

Under the whole foot well area it's all dented as if it's taken some big blows under the car, or been dropped on it's guts in that section. The chassis rail behind the break isn't rusted at all but rather than being flat on the bottom it is concave.

Under the foot well there is some rust and a fair few holes, but they don't appear to be rust holes. I may be wrong, but it looks like holes that have been gouged there, then they have rusted.

They've put an extra sheet of metal in the footwell under the carpet so you don't notice all the holes.

Also, i dug a chuck of rust out of the rear crack in the rail, and this chuck of rust/metal has a whole bunch of what looks like 1-2cm long bits of wire coming out of it. A few of them have little blobs of metal on the end. Any idea what the hell they are?

So my guess is it's been crashed in some way, maybe run up a gutter as that would cause the radius rod to put alot of force on the chassis rail right there. After the crash it's probably just had a dodgy repair done and all the damage sprayed over with tar.

Or maybe the crash caused it to crack there, then the crack has rusted, been sprayed over, then my hard braking yesterday finally broke it.

Any ideas?

*I'm trying to get my hands on a digi cam asap as ours is getting fixed.

**On a positive note, i haven't found any rust anywhere else under the car.

[Alan Pugh]

The little bits of wire with blobs on the end come from someones unsuccessful attemt it would seem at mig welding. From what you've described someone has found the rust, tried to fix it, discovered more and more then given up and sold the car.

The good news is that nearly everything on these cars can be repaired, it's just a matter of time and money. Photos will help everyone give you better answers if you can post some.

Alan.

[Murph]

My current thought is that it isn't rust that's caused the problem. It looks more like it's been crash damaged, then rusted around the sections that have broken.

Then of course someone has done a dodgy repair then sprayed over it.

Under the foot well, the holes there don't look like rust holes. It looks like the holes have been gouged into the metal, then it's rusted a bit around those edges. Go just a mm or two back from the edge and it's good metal.

Scares me to think I drove that thing 1500km home on the highway.

[Alfadog]

The holes in the floorpan could be your drainage holes... are they like these holes: http://www.classiczcars.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=2991&papass=&sort=1&thecat=998

No not those huge gaping holes at the front, the round ones in the middle of the floor.

Get some pics