(G) A nightmare on uno street

The drivers carpet was damp. I decided to take the wing off to have a look.

I then dropped a socket into the body so had to remove a bit of carpet to get access to a hole so I could get it out

I should have stayed in bed today.

Wow not seen one that bad before.

Matt

Thats very rare rust for NZ conditions. And a mk2 uno as well...

The stuff in the wheel arch looks the hardest to fix. But it all looks fixable.

I've fixed rust like you have in the floor before. Thats a pretty common place to get rust.

My heart goes out to you.
That looks like in-built rust to me - as though the steel was lightly pre-rusted before assembly. It reminds me of a Mk2 door I saw once where the frame had totally disappeared, yet the door skin (hanging free) was completely un-rusted. My guess is that the frame steel was pre-rusted... and similarly in your case the rust seems to run right past other steel without the other steel being affected!

On Trademe, there's a white Mk2 Selecta. It looks almost perfect (there is some just-noticeable rust at the top of one rear door, under the window, but not bubbles and not through the paint, just some orange marks, an easy fix). Otherwise it IS perfect, all white paint matches and no dents anywhere, even the bumpers are nice and black, the interior pristine, only done 70,000km, engine (1372cc) and transmission in full working condition...

...and lapsed registration. Apparently the owners forgot to relicense it when they went overseas, and didn't know about getting an exemption either

The guy that owns it has been advertising it as parts, but the car is far too good to wreck - and we both agreed that. So far, he's sold parts off another Uno instead. The white Selecta has a modest asking price - well under four figures - that's all I'm going to say. PM me if you'd like to discuss further!

As James says, that rust could be fixed - but yuck, what a job when it goes behind the under-seat crossmember and down to the floor. And, what are the odds of there being rust under the floor as well - jacking points? How about the rear strut turrets?

Also I'm a bit confused, as I thought you had a Mk1 70?

-Alex

I agree with Alex, it looks like a bad panel was used from new and it's rusted from the inside out. I've seen worse Uno floors by the way!

The rest of the car is sweet. I was talking to Jai about removing the wing and he said that there would be a lot of mastic sealing the wing to the body. Well in this case there was nothing at all. So I think a leak between the wing and the body progressed to the decay behind the wing, the water dripping down to the frame where it sat shielded by carpet, probably for at least 4-5 years. None of it was visible at all from anywhere until I lifted the carpet. I've got a guy who will weld it all up for about $350, and it'll be a good job.

Sounds like its been in a crash or similar early in its life and they've replaced the wing without replacing the mastic, or painting it by the looks lol.

Matt

[/quote]

Whoops, sorry - I missed that. Yes, it was/is.

How's the welding going? The other night I was having a dream where every piece of metal I touched turned to rust within minutes. I can't remember if I was working on an Uno or not, but it wasn't a pleasant dream. I blame your pictures

-Alex

(It will probably come true as well )

Alex, after that dream you had better go check under all your carpets haha
Well it was major. It's all welded and back together. Expensive job.
So anyway, you guessed it, first bit of rain and the carpet was wet again.
And water was running exactly where it used to, but this time on the freashly painted new steel.
A quick check of the forum and up comes 'windscreen leaking'.
Sure enough it was the seal, bottom corner.
As there had already been rust repair on the wing (cosmetic only) before me, It's my guess that the previous owner had driven for years with this leak, getting rust repaired without looking hard enough for the source, and just putting up with a wet carpet, whie the car was being eaten inside out.
To think a $8 tube of bathroom mastic when water was first spotted could have saved all this bother.