James - 1, Rust - 0
 

Some of you may or may not know, but I got my black VE from a .org member in Pennsylvania four or five years ago. It's not rusted out like a few I've seen on here, but it does (did) have the rust in the rear lower door sills which seems to be quite common. The passenger side was considerably worse than the driver side. The driver side wasn't rusted all the way through like this side. I honestly didn't realize it'd gotten so bad since my sideskirts were covering most of this up.

I had Michael cut out a piece for me from his parts car a while back and I finally got around to working on it. Still have some work to do but the pics should speak for themselves. Never thought I'd be doing this sort of project in Texas!

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...se/Rust002.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...se/Rust003.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...se/Rust005.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...se/Rust006.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...se/Rust007.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...se/Rust010.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...e/Rust0011.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...se/Rust011.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...e/Rust0021.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...e/Rust0041.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...e/Rust0061.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...e/Rust0071.jpg

just like new, and beats the hell out of bondo. Nice work.

good job now get some color on it because that primer is porous and it will rust up on you again.

Thats been a couple of years ago since I cut that out and sent it to you hasn't it?

Haha, yeah it's been a few years. The part had been sitting in the backyard all this time. :wall:

looks like top notch work thumbs up to you!

brushed aluminum ftw. nice works james.

woah, that's not my idea of a good time :eek4:



Nice work James!

Whoa!! Now that was some bad rust :shock:

I had some surface rust in the same areas on my car,but nothing like this,all i had to do was grind it off,then repaint...

Props on the work..:)

mmmm power toolz. :)

nice, exctally what i got to do, and i have both sides , just gotta get them in

So THATS how you do it huh? My car is getting pretty bad just like yours was. I know its kind of self explanatory in the pictures but would you be able to do a brief writeup? I'd really appreciate it dude :cool:

Props on the work!

nice, i repaired mine in the exact same spot but it wasnt as badly rusted as yours was

Bump!

Hi all,

I am having the same rust problem on the rear door sills of a 3rd gen Maxima in Europe.

The car is well maintained, low mileage, many options, etc. There is very little rust on other parts of the car and I suspect this problem is the result of a production failure.

Now I am looking for a temporary conserving option to delay further detoriation. I don’t have the time at the moment to cut it all out, weld it and plaster/paint it. The local panel beater said it would cost about a thousand bucks to get it fixed. Not a cheap option either.

Would covering it inside and outside with rust converting epoxy slow down the rusting process for a year or two? Or would covering the inside of the sills with a bunch of that tectyl/tar stuff be sufficient? Or is there no choice really and should it be dealt with properly as soon as possible?

Like I said, the car is in great shape and hope to keep it that way.

Thanks for your responses.

See if you can find a product called POR-15 locally to you. It does amazing things to stop rust.
http://www.por15.com/

basically you'll just take a wire wheel to it and clean the worst of the rust off. then treat it with an etching primer/cleaner that has some pretty strong stuff in it. once that's dry, you coat it with the enamel and it solidifies rock hard and seals all oxygen away from the metal.. no oxygen, no oxidation!

I still never fixed the driver side, which isn't nearly as bad. It has a couple of small hols in it though, so I'll be doing something like Por-15 on it since I'm too lazy to do all that cutting and welding again.

some rust converter and fiberglass should fix it up pretty quick. then seal w/ POR-15 and iy should be good for years.

is that stuff heat-resistant enough to use on engine blocks and exhaust parts too?

Cheers! That por 15 stuff is just the thing I was looking for. It is sold in the Netherlands as well. Not exactly cheap, but a heck of a lot easier than welding in a new piece of iron.

Greetings from Holland (where the next king is married to.... princess Maxima :goofy:).

Caped, You can probably use it on the block, but I doubt it's strong enough for the exhaust. do some research on their website and see.

daCook, Here in the states, they sell a "starter kit" with a small can of the stuff and the primer and a mixing can and such- everything you need for a small area. It was enough to do almost the entire floorboard of my truck. It's not the cheapest paint out there, but it's high quality stuff and worth every penny. The ease of use of the starter kit doubles the value, IMO.
that little kit should be enough to do either one or two wheel wells. You might try to find those locally and run with that.

Thanks once again Matt.
I couldn't find the starter pack here, so I'll just get the etching cleaner and a pot of coating stuff.

More trouble on the Max though. Bloody workshop guys messed up front suspension. :mad:

Oh ehrr, has anyone ever been able to find the cause for the rust in this spot? A leaking seam perhaps at the point where the inner wheel arch is attatched to the outer wheel arch??

IIRC, it's due to the undercoater being too thin or the fuel lines and mounting hardware collecting mud and holding wet mud against the body for long periods of time. something like that.

might look at the info on the rear seat belt recall for the northern US, because it's all related...

Bump:

I've worked on fixing the other side these past few days. I got a "starter kit" of POR-15 and decided to go that route since it wasn't nearly as bad as the other side I fixed a few years ago. When I first got this car about 8 years ago I "fixed" this spot with some generic "rust converter" but it didn't seem to do much. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I can use the POR-15 directly with fiberglass mat (use the POR-15 in lieu of resin). So, that's what I did.

I coated the whole area in POR-15 (used their cleaner as well as the "prep" solution first), and then used fiberglass mat to cover the holes. I went with two layers of mat in the area to make it as strong as I could. I didn't want to use much filler, but because the fiberglass areas essentially created high spots (and I obviously couldn't sand them down), I ended up using the filler to build the area up around it.

I will say the POR-15 is MUCH thinner/runnier than I thought it would be. It didn't quite "act" like resin with the fiberglass so it was hard to make the mat stay down, but I ended up getting it to work out okay.

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...s92se/w004.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...s92se/w005.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...s92se/w007.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...s92se/w014.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...s92se/w016.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...s92se/w018.jpg

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...s92se/w019.jpg

The last pic is pretty much all sanded down and just needs another primer layer and then the color coat. I'll update this tomorrow when I get it all fully finished.

That looks awesome James, nice work.:doublethu

You are my hero James! I need to do this to both my 3rd and 4th gens lol Still waiting for that write up I "suggested" earlier in this thread (in 2007) lol

nice work :)

i see you had the same rust as me, the rear doors in that corner. i fixed all of my rust last year (surface on both front wheel wells, both rear wells were eaten through, and the r year door corners were BAD) and new rust has appeared in some areas from this winter, but the rear door rust came back. its unpleasant because i needed a angle grinder to get it off, but after the first time of fixing rust i think the second time around will be easier :)

the eaten through crap on the rear wheel wells was the worst though, when we were making up new metal to fill the passenger rear side pounds of rotted rusted bits were just falling out while we were working on it

not to threadjack, but when i took off my rear seats to install my harnesses, the metal below the rear seat cushions on the backrest has surface rust, WTF? have to fix that too, but water/debris must collect badly on 3rd gens rear doors to be such a bad rust collector.

only good thing is at least the rear doors are easier to work on than Nissans other models rust, like S13's rear hatch/spoiler rust

This car really didn't have any rust except for in those lower door sill areas. I mean it had oxidized/surface rust on some of the engine/engine bay stuff, but overall the car was pretty good. The rear wheel wells, rear strut towers, gas filler neck area, seat belt mounting locations and all that were/are all perfectly fine. I meant to get a "finished" picture of the area, but I sold the car before getting around to it. Here's the latest picture I got (just about done, just a little bit more wet sanding and a few more layers of paint):

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/e...s92se/w020.jpg

Once I finished that spot, I replaced the gas tank vent hose and listed the car on CL on Sunday evening. I had a surprising amount of interest in it and got 5-6 e-mails/calls about it within half an hour of listing it. I had it sold by noon Monday :wavey: Kind of sad to see it go, but I got a fair price for it considering all the work/new parts/repairs I've put into it the past few years. Plus, I've got two more VE 5's :laugh: