richardbaxter

I have just removed the sill covers on my 1993 3.8 saloon because there was quite a rusty area around the front jacking points. As I prodded around the internal domed area a hole emerged! The domed area came away on the inside. What to do?

The surrounding areas seem sound so my thinking is to purchase the outer sill and then cut and shut this rusty area - what are the comments on this?

farrell

Hard one to call sight unseen.
Front sill jacking points seem to be a collector for all road grime & salt.
I guess I would try & do a local repair if all other metal is sound.
Can you get some pics ?

Cheers

richardbaxter

I decided this evening to drill out the 4 spot welds on the outside fitted strengthening plate (with the hole in the centre to locate the jack). The cill metal was quite weakened where the plate is attached and managed to peek a look inside the section.

Directly above the plate there is a verticle strengthening section which has rusted away at the point where the plate is fixed. I have left the plate in a soloution to dissolve the rust and removed the rubberised protectant sufficient to reveal good metal.

Fortunately the rust is quite localised and not reached the tricky forward curved section. My feeling is to cut out the rusty metal with a tiny cutting wheel which will reveal more of the inside condition so that the vertical section can be assessed.

Hopefully! I can fabricate new pieces using the rusty sections as a template to form new pieces to weld in. However some of these pieces have radiuses and I'm contemplating forming a sand cast to form a cast iron template which I can then press a piece of metal to accurately replicate the shapes required - high ideas and then theres the issue of properly welding the internal parts to the outer cill!!!

There could be some disturbed sleep before nailing this one..........

davidoli

How'd you sleep last night Rich ?

In my experience , it's better to cut out all of the corroded metal and weld in new metal although it is one of the most traumatic things I have had to do on a car , chopping bits of original metal away !

At least once it's all done you will have the certainty of knowing that it's all good , rust free metal , around there .

Good luck ........D

__________________
Better a day as a tiger than a lifetime as a sheep !

91 Sebring 3.6

E28 UK RHD M5

farrell

Hi Richard
Sounds like an excellent approach to the problem.
I know Davidoli has been busy with a cutting wheel on the inner wings & flitches on his first E28.
He's done well.

What has been raised here is something that many members may want to inspect.
My front o/s jacking point went rather crumbly a couple of yrs ago.
I resorted to hot blasting & a little welding & resealed & painted.
Its holding up so far.
The proactive approach to the front sill jacking points seem to be a weakness in this
otherwise tough galvanised super saloon....or is exacerbated by the UK & its love of salting the roads at every opportunity ?

Cheers
Farrell

richardbaxter

I've delved a little further into the rotten front jacking point and its not a happy scene.

I first drilled out the spot welds on the heavy duty bracket (which locates the jack) The cill is sandwiched between this and a further heavy duty member which has the 'hollow' ( which is also a jack location).

As I was doing this lots of flaky rust was falling down. As the cill at this point was pretty thin I removed this inner hollow section by forcing it out. With a torch I could see there is a vertical section which takes the jack loading upto the car and should have been attached to the hollow section but rust has had its day so there was no support!

If I had used the jack it is likely that the cill would have given way so thanks be I had not - otherwise the deformation and damage would be horrendous.

So I decided to cut out the visible rusty area around. This allowed me to see inside as to exactly what was going on. This is a section where three panels meet, the outer cill, the inner cill and the floor - all of which are worse for wear.

In trying to repair this section which in dimensional terms covers an area of approx 200mm in length and 60mm in height is tricky because the original formation is all welded inside the cill.

My idea at present is to either replace the whole area with new parts which are extensive to deal with (essentially a very small area) or try to refabricate the sections one by one, this will require some pretty handy shaping, welding and redesigning to enable the work to proceed in what is otherwise a totally encased area.

One has I feel to balance this with the value of the car against making sure the work is thorough and to remove all the rusty sections. Somehow the refabrication makes more sense as less of the original panels have to be removed and the costs are negligable save for a lot of thinking and doing time which after all is the only freebie in this world.

However first I would like to obtain a cost for having the work done to keep it totally to spec such as would be the case if it was a repair needed due to some accident damage.

There is however a challenge and satisfaction for being able to crack this by doing it myself. So far I have been looking at equiping myself with some quality tools of the miniture kind to see if a good repair can be carried out in this very confined space............

richardbaxter

a further thought about this issue........... it concerns me that this could be a real weak point on these cars- primarily because everything looks so benign underneath the plastic bodykit that no one would consider this to be an issue.

It is only because I removed this body kit and started to poke around with a screwdriver that the issue became apparant and who would normally check?

Left undetected the rust would just keep creeping through these completely hidden areas until the floor rusted through and wet carpets caused one to investigate or indeed the jack collapsed!

Time to check I feel!

Sebring NL

The part where the official jacking points reside is very hard to work on.

I could tell you what to do but it would take 2 pages or 5 minutes of finger pointing.

Sorry.

Wout

farrell

Hi Wout.
I know you are pressed for time.
Could you take some pics with some arrows put on as an indicator
in place of finger pointing.
That might help ?
Front jack points are becoming an increasing problem.

Farrell

Sebring NL

As soon as my car is on the hoist ( still don't have all the parts!!) I will make some pics and write a brief summary.