Hi All

Whilst vigorously cleaning the 2005 Multijet sills as the weather has been dreadful of late I put my scrubbing brush through the sill, it looked perfectly ok just filthy but it appears that the only thing that was in tact was the Stone chip/Underseal that is painted body colour, underneath there is no metal left and it is all wet inside, is this a known problem as I could not find anything by searching.

The round rubber grommets that run along the under side of the sill are all present (other that the one I pushed through with the nail brush) has anyone any Idea where the water could be getting in ? as far as I can see there is only access via these grommets and the oval one high up in the rear wheel arch.

I am at a loss as I thought that these cars were dip galvanised

Any help gratefully received

Yep normal


There's less and less 2006 and back left on the road


It can be patched with a metal plate for around £50


The other side will not far behind


Some of the other joint areas are also starting to weaken


Its a toss up weather to patch or cut and run.


Swapping to a later model will give a £130 saving in road tax £50 not MOTing it and £50-£100 in welding

I Patched once. Then swapped the next year to a 2010 Model. I could have kept going but the integrity of the shell has been seriously weakened and decided to have it crushed rather than selling it.

Thanks for the reply, so have you any idea where the water gets in ? as it appears to be rusting from the inside out.

When you say some of the joint areas are also starting to weaken what joints are we talking about, is there any sort of drain system for the sills ? my ancient Nissan had a sort of slot in the sill front and rear that if blocked caused a similar issue but I can not see anything similar on the Fiat

Differently from the inside

Some MOT stations are getting wise to it. You can take a car with no visible signs and it come back with a hole pushed through the paint.

Mine had started lightly on the vertical joins of the front chassis rails and a bit around the strut mounts. The chassis rail is designed to bend here in the event of an accident. Its all designed to break away in a predictable way.

Two cars the same. Plenty more if you read through some MOT history. Comes up as corrosion near rear suspension mount or similar. Its far more common than rear axil rot


They done well to hold up for 15 years on British roads without issues.


You may have sentimental reasons for keeping a car. Or have a lot of refurbishments invested in it. But I have bought a 09 Alto and 10 Panda for £600 and £500 both need work costing about the same as two patches.

koalar said:

...but the integrity of the shell has been seriously weakened and decided to have it crushed rather than selling it...

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A good call, IMO. Once a car corrodes to the point where its structural bodyshell would fail an MOT, the car should be crushed. Patching any part of the stuctural bodyshell by plating is a dubious practice; there can be no guarantee that this will restore its subsequent crash performance.

Such plating used to be common practice on the cars of my youth, but 1960's cars were, by comparison, death traps in a high energy collision even when brand new. Even in the day, experts warned against the practice and questioned the subsequent crash performance of these repaired MOT failures. It really has no place in the repair of modern daily drivers; the real issue here is safety, not economics.

koalar said:

They done well to hold up for 15 years on British roads without issues.

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That. Small mass produced cars are designed to have an economic life of 10-12 years.

I hear what you are saying, I am just surprised that water can get into the void, I have now been along the sill with a hammer and everywhere else is solid, the actual puncture hole caused by the nailbrush is only the size of a 10p. I will grind off all the underseal and see how far the corrosion has spread over the weekend, I also intend to clean off the O/S rear sill to see if that has been similarly affected although it does not seem to be when struck with a hammer in the same place as the nearside

I agree that just welding a plate over the hole as was done years ago is not a solution, however if the repair is carried out as it would be with a restoration where all the affected material is removed and new steel fully welded in place and panel sealed, the structural integrity would not be affected, the problem with cars of this age is that the cost of that sort of repair would be prohibitive.

I will report back when I have cleaned the underseal off

Damaged by careless use of jack?
The only Pandas I've seen with rusty sills all had deformed seams where some joker had crushed it with a trolley jack or similar.
Breaks the paint, stresses the seam, and water gets in.
Got an 04 panda with perfect sill seams and no detectable rust. Dealer serviced until I got it.
And a 10 plate one with a bent seam which I've treated with various things, re-sealed and repainted but I suspect it's a ticking time bomb. Cheaply maintained (but only when something broke!) until I got it.

irc said:

Damaged by careless use of jack?
The only Pandas I've seen with rusty sills all had deformed seams where some joker had crushed it with a trolley jack or similar.

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It might happen


But neither of my cars has any visable damage


None of the four sills have any bubbling of paint


Even knocking with your knuckle seems fine


Tap with one of these https://www.sitebox.ltd.uk/sealey-h1mot-corrosion-assessment-hammer-dvsa-approved-osealey_H1MOT my MOT tester is quite Good at finding it which I don't mind as I don't want to be in an unsafe car

Corrosion is from the inside


Use Google images pull up some 2005/06 cars and look through the MOT histories. Should find one thats failed in a couple of tries

Mine went in the same place. It's a 54 plate.

I cut it all out, fired rust treatment up inside as much as I could, then welded a new section in.

The rest of the car is absolutely solid. The MOT tester at the garage where I take it each year always remembers it.....when I first took it in, he expected it to be a rust bucket underneath......but he couldn't believe how clean and solid it was.

Even the rear axle and spring pans are solid with no rust.....and they're original....which is even more surprising considering its spent its first 12 years in a seaside town.

Cinq999 said:

Mine went in the same place. It's a 54 plate.

I cut it all out, fired rust treatment up inside as much as I could, then welded a new section in.

The rest of the car is absolutely solid. The MOT tester at the garage where I take it each year always remembers it.....when I first took it in, he expected it to be a rust bucket underneath......but he couldn't believe how clean and solid it was.

Even the rear axle and spring pans are solid with no rust.....and they're original....which is even more surprising considering its spent its first 12 years in a seaside town.

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Well done on fixing it yourself

I am surprised its not starting elsewhere. Front chassis legs, rear handbrake brackets, top of the strut and so on. The floor pans are pretty Good and they certainly aren't rot box's

Seen loads but none with a hole as large as yours but have only seen one rear axle fail. Even then I don't know if it was due corrosion as all I could see was the pan twisted off in a photo. Nearly bought it but wasn't too happy driving it across the peak district


Its almost identical to the Matiz look at the older one in a carpark they often have the same patch.

irc said:

Damaged by careless use of jack?
The only Pandas I've seen with rusty sills all had deformed seams where some joker had crushed it with a trolley jack or similar.
Breaks the paint, stresses the seam, and water gets in.
Got an 04 panda with perfect sill seams and no detectable rust. Dealer serviced until I got it.
And a 10 plate one with a bent seam which I've treated with various things, re-sealed and repainted but I suspect it's a ticking time bomb. Cheaply maintained (but only when something broke!) until I got it.

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This is the issue. There are too many tyre fitters who can't be arsed to check the sills. Panda sills need a slotted pad on the jack.

If the damage is restricted to the jacking area then it's reasonable to get it welded but make sure the inside is properly waxed or the weld will rot from the inside in a year or two. If the end of the sill has to be rebuilt I'd go with the new car solution.

You can check the internal box sections with a cheap endoscopy from eBay.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-IN-1-H...231528?hash=item3b4c6c39a8:g:kvMAAOSwzM5fM7KF

I think its wishful thinking to think its all to do with jacking


First my cars one does have sill damage the other doesn't yet both failed in exactly the same place


Second my cars had damage in other places along the sill but no rust here. Including one bad jacking damage to the font and another had been grounded on a rock in the middle


Third all four sills are identical. You could sketch from one sill to another and it would be a match to a mm ?? Yet they went over a 3 year period


I have come across this many times and reminds me of old chevets and BL cars


The metal get thin and shows in one place. Here is an example on a BMW no hole just a small bubble

The sill was stripped back to find other holes and when the sill was cut off there was also corrosion in other areas

I had a Galaxy that suffered sill damage in an accident. The whole sill inner and outer was replaced. Less than 2 years later the sill was bubbling. It was corrosion coming through.

Insurance paid to have it repaired but the levels of damage were astounding. There had been absolutely nothing done to protect the internal metal and everything was red rusty rotten. The repairs were very well done but I doubt it was an economic repair.

Replacing bad material is only part of the job. The hidden stuff has to be fully protected. Simply squirting in some Waxoyl won't do it. The stuff has to be spayed everywhere and inspected with an endoscope to make sure there are no missed bits. Is that even possible on a chassis that was originally dipped into a huge tank of passivate primer?