Rust rust and even more rust!!

[Ed]

Since rescuing my 1991 red MG Monty in January, today is the first day I have really had the chance to have a good look at the bodywork. Have cleaned and polished her and she now looks quite presentable with her gleaming Flame Red bodywork. However, i have attached pics of the worst of the bodywork. Wheelarches obviously are easy to replace and I am going to have them done asap, but as you can see, there is quite a bit of rust in the body seams in the door shut areas, worst one being inside the drivers door (bottom right pic). Has anyone tackled this kind of rust, is it easy to permanantly get rid of? Are there repair panels available? Thanx guys.

[TurboMG]

Repair panels are avaliable but there very expensive, and you'd only use a tiny bit of them, like you say the worst is inside the drivers door, havent seen one that bad before, ask your self is it worth repairing, if you think so you'll have to make some repair patches out of sheet metal.

[Ed]

It is quite bad isn't it, but theres no question that I will be repairing the car, its got too much going for it otherwise. I am going to be breaking another Montego I have and it has got rustfree areas like this, do you think it would be possible to cut out those areas and weld them to the MG?

[MGTurbo]

They rot from the inside, externally rust might not be visible on the donor, i would fabricate sections of metal and weld them in.

Gareth

[Ed]

Thanks for the tip, i'll look into getting some repair sections made up. :cool:

[talkingcars]

As per Gareth - nasty - I tried to repair my estate after being quoted £800 by my local trusted independant garage, I scraped the car in the end.

James

[Ed]

Eek, now I'm getting nervous. I couldn't scrap the car as its fine other than the areas in the picture. The only bit I'm worried about as we've said is the bottom right hand picture but I'm hoping to get a repair section made up. If the car wasn't so mechanically sound with full service history and genuine 59K on the clock, I probably wouldn't bother but being the Monty freak that I am, I am already too attached and would consider it murder to scrap or break! hehe :laugh: Has anyone actually successfully repaired this area before?

[JonCooper]

since you have a donor car I'd be tempted to try that route first

my local dealer quoted about £40 for the A-post but you need hardly any of it

I don't think it's a particularly hard repair (assuming you can weld)

[SubCat001]

I shouldn't see fabricating the parts would be much trouble. If your competent with a Welder then give it ago. To many people give up on cars.

[tony]

it will be good practice for your next monty
:)

[Ed]

The Montego that I'm breaking has a good A post so I could cut that one out. I have never welded before but have a couple of mates who would do it for me. Tomorrow she is being booked in for rear arches and a friend is going to blast the other scabby bits in the pictures that just appear to be surface rust (aslong as it stays surface rust! hehe). I am trying to get this car ready to go on the road for the summer as I hope to take her to MG M this year. My other MG Monty has no rust in these areas luckily. Thanks for all your tips guys.

[Ed]

Why is it whenever I phone a bodyshop about bodywork for one of my Montys, they either laugh or let out a huge sigh?? Do i really want to be trusting one of these guys with my car? Urgh!! Can anyone on this side of the country recommend anyone?

[richard52m]

I scrapped a car with the same rust problem, but on reflection maybe I should have repaired it. You will need to remove the front door, check whether the top hinge pin is welded to the hinge bracket, if it is you will not be able to hammer the top hinge pin out. This means the top bracket will have to be removed intact, which means you may damage the front wing when you remove the door. However, I would recommend that you remove the wing as well, so you can get a grinder in.
There may be further rust damage inside the sill, this will become obvious when you cut out the rusty/thin metal. Don't worry too much thought, if you remove the carpets from the drivers footwell you will see some hefty metal connecting the main engine mounting beams to the inner sills, so the area you are looking does not take all the structural load.
If you do tackle it I'd be interested to see some pics !

[talkingcars]

You can access the rear of the hinges through the dash board, I removed a door in 20 minutes in the dark and rain last week, IIRC you need a long reach 13mm socket and several UV jointed estensions for your wrench.

James

[Ed]

I've just got back from taking the car down to a local bodyshop. She is booked in on April 26th (earliest they could do but gives me time to save the cash). The guy there was very interested in the car and more than happy to do both rear arches and repair the A post with new metal all for £210. Bargain? I thought so! All i have to do is remove the rear bumper, drivers door and front wing in preparation. I am so happy to know that the work can be done and then it will only be cosmetic work left to do (hopefully). I will certainly be taking it there for other work in future!:)

[Ed]

Thanks for the tips Richard and James! :)

[JEFF A]

I used to own a 2.0 GTI estate which had rust in the same spot excpt 10x worse. Repair is straight forward, however, you have to take the door off. Thats not difficult, just cut out the affected parts and refabricate a new piece. It is worth noting that the sun roof drains do eventually end up in this general area, make sure any drainage holes are clear. What I did was after I replaced this part I drilled a hole in it and sprayed it with waxoyl and engine oil mix then put a small grommet in the whole. That part never rusted again, took about 6 hours. Happy cutting

[G51 NAV]

Good luck with repairing your car...

If you have to do it a bit-at-a-time as funds allow (like the most of us), if you want the car to be a "rolling project" concentrate first on the areas of rust needed to get the car through an MoT.

As far as an MoT is concerned, the tester is looking for corrosion in two types of places: load-bearing areas (near suspension-turrets, seat-belt anchorage-points, etc) and areas deemed important to the car's structural rigidity (e.g.: on our cars, sills & floorpans). Any area of rust not falling under those categories will not cause the car to fail an MoT providing that (a) the corrosion does not leave the car with any dangerous sharp edges (e.g.: on the wheel-arches), and (b) that it doesn't effect the performance of any other testable items (e.g.: your headlights have dropped out).

To that end, the rust in certainly your nearside sill and B-pillar will fail an MoT because it falls foul of both requirements: the sills are structural, and the corrosion is close to the seat-belt anchorage points (there is a specified distance in mm, but I can't remember it)

[Ricky]

I'm sure the distance is 30cm, how this is measured i'll never know, but i'm sure it's 30cm cos this is what my Maesty failed on in many many areas! :banghead: :laugh:

[MaestroMatt]

It is definitely 30cm; I distinctly remember a car of mine failing on this (amongst other things).