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In another thread about 2 weeks ago, I enquired about MIG welding sheet steel - I commented that my W140 had a group of rust bubbles below the right tail light. This is unusual - W140's are almost impervious to rust. Initial investigations showed no signs of accident damage. I was wanting to fix this visible rust because its deterring prospective buyers of the car.
Today I removed the tail light and reflective strip that runs horizontally across the full width of the car. This strip is about 50mm wide, and separated from the paint work by a hard foam backing about 1mm thick. This was saturated with water. (the car was last subjected to a car wash or rain a month ago). The paintwork behind there showed lots of bubbles. I tentatively started prodding with a screw driver, and found that the whole area is bog - about 50% of the width of the car - in a band about 60mm high above the bumper - and all this bog was saturated with water (bog 1 to 4mm thick). I easily scooped it off with a screwdriver to find horribly corroded metal and a crappy accident repair with tears in the metal braized together.
By know I was wanting to cry - this was supposed to be a 1-afternoon quick fix to help with the sale of the car - and now I have a whole lot of exposed rusted metal. I set about it with a 3M-stripping disc in the drill. To my relief, most of it has come up pretty shiny, with only some limited areas having deeper corrosion. I think its on the border-line between cut-and-weld versus treat the rust and put new bog on. Given that I'm aiming to sell the car, I'm afraid its going to be the latter.
Not a good afternoon of spannering.
Today I removed the tail light and reflective strip that runs horizontally across the full width of the car. This strip is about 50mm wide, and separated from the paint work by a hard foam backing about 1mm thick. This was saturated with water. (the car was last subjected to a car wash or rain a month ago). The paintwork behind there showed lots of bubbles. I tentatively started prodding with a screw driver, and found that the whole area is bog - about 50% of the width of the car - in a band about 60mm high above the bumper - and all this bog was saturated with water (bog 1 to 4mm thick). I easily scooped it off with a screwdriver to find horribly corroded metal and a crappy accident repair with tears in the metal braized together.
By know I was wanting to cry - this was supposed to be a 1-afternoon quick fix to help with the sale of the car - and now I have a whole lot of exposed rusted metal. I set about it with a 3M-stripping disc in the drill. To my relief, most of it has come up pretty shiny, with only some limited areas having deeper corrosion. I think its on the border-line between cut-and-weld versus treat the rust and put new bog on. Given that I'm aiming to sell the car, I'm afraid its going to be the latter.
Not a good afternoon of spannering.
