Potential rust spot, front inner wing.

[Andy Brookes 0]

Hi All,

 

While replacing the front abs sensor this weekend, I found a patch of bubblie rust in the inner wing. It looks to me like the sealing robots had not been as good as they normally are in this area of the inner wing.

 

Once I started digging the hole became quite large and will need a patch welding in.

 

So just a warning to keep a lookout in this area, as my car is rust free otherwise.

 

This is what was hidding under the sealant.

 

Cheers Andy

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Eeek, that's not good. We'll all be lifting our washer bottles out at lunchtime now!

 

The middle pic is confusing.... have you ground out all the dead metal or something as it looks almost like it's supposed to be like that, but the other 2 pics look like regular rot for sure.

[Henny 0]

Are you sure that's not a drain point? As Kev says, that looks way too neat for tinworm... :|

[dr_mat 0]

I've heard about similar probs before - in fact I heard about a car where the metal "cup" welded to the chassis leg there split away at the weld line, basically leaving the front end dropped on it's wheel arches, resting on the underside of the bonnet..

 

Not good news at all.. It's those muppets in the Karmann factory - they are simply NOT as thorough as the robots when it comes to putting underseal into all the nooks+crannies...

[Andy Brookes 0]

Afraid its not a drain point..... just my rather neat cutting back to solid metal!

 

That area within the wheel arch just had less sealant than the rest of the surrounding seams.

 

The area is current covered with duck tape until I have a spare afternoon to weld it up. Amazing what you can do with that stuff!!!

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Dr Mat - Nice to see you're being as pessimistic as ever :lol:

I think you'll find the seam sealer is applied by hand on all cars...unless you know of any robots that are adept with a paint brush?

 

Andy - Good work, I suspected that was some nifty angle grinding :D Very curious that... VW strut assemblies are not known to rot like that.

[Andy Brookes 0]

Angle grinder with a wire brush head and a drimmel. The wire brush is the only way to attack spots like that, gets you back to solid metal in no time. Then just trimmed the edges back to make the hole a nice shape to plate.

 

I'm glad I'm not Dr Mat, I would have slit my wrists a long time ago!!!!

[Yandards 0]

Whilst the sealing bod may have been having a bad day it is worth pointing out that due to the increasing age of our cars that these sorts of 'odd' bits of rust are going to become more common.

 

So it would be good if everyone posts up some pics of where they have had corrosion then we can all panick and start ripping our cars to bits!

 

Also with the sealent becoming older it will harden and crack, this will allow a bit of capillery action; sucking any moisture into the cracked sealent and setting up good conditions for corrosion.

 

Nice example of how to remove corrosion though Andy

 

Cheers,

Yan

[kerrinmay 0]

Should the washer bottle just slide straight out (upwards) or is there anything that needs to be undone first? I was trying to get mine out at the weekend as it had got quite low and looked inside to find it with a nice layer or crud at the bottom.

[Andy Brookes 0]

Mine has a couple of speed nuts holding it down at the bottom...... but mines a 7 litre version due to headlamp washers, so may not be the norm.

[dr_mat 0]

I'm glad I'm not Dr Mat, I would have slit my wrists a long time ago!!!!

 

I did. But I used a VW toolkit, which broke due to being substandard, and therefore I survived to tell the tale.. ;)

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I survived to tell the tale.. ;)

 

What a shame :wink:

 

Note to VW:- Please make your toolkit stronger so Dr_Mat can kill himself with it. :lol:

[dr_mat 0]

I will take that as a supportive comment... ;)