Rust Dilemma

[monkeykiller1996]

well for my upcoming build (this summer)i thought i would strip out my interior to see the condition of the body well i already known that i had rust but not to this extent so i'm in dilemma "to build or not to build, that is the question" ,come sometime in May im getting a $1k lincoln welder with my income taxes so ill have a good welder to help me fix it


so it started out good not too bad
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rear strut towers in almost perfect condition
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but then it starts getting bad just behind the pass. side rear stut tower we hit our first snag not too bad, easily fixable
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then we start heading forward in the car the faint hearted might want to skip these pictures, first we head just behind the driver side seat alittle harder to fix but not impossible
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we start with the passenger side i think cool the hole looks small then
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BAMM crap get real
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then i start to think,i've lived in northern ohio for the most part of my life and the driver side is always worse when it come to rust because it gets attacked from salt and water from both sides of the floor pan well i was right the driver side was worse (it went up the side a lot farther)
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well that all the photos i have the whole reason im debating fixing it is because i already bought the bigger motor (not disclosing which one yet you'll have to wait for that ) also a turbo and tranny, every time i try to debate if its worth it or not the only answer i can come back to is "FESTIVA JUST FESTIVA"

[monkeykiller1996]

common any advise is it worth saving ,another thing is i kinda bet my brother $100 that i could beat him in a 1/4 mile this summer he drives a dodge intrepid bone stock(should run 16's if i researched right) so looks like the rust will set me back and loose some money lol oh well with the motor and turbo i picked i should make in the low 200hp but it might never see my festi's body

[shadetree]

Sorry , but I'd get a new body .

[monkeykiller1996]

ya i was afraid of that but finding a good body in the north is almost impossible

[TorqueEffect]

I say as long as your fine with the car not looking factory or good looking ever again, cut the rest of that rust out and make it into a fast rat rod esque festy with some crude but functional patches. Basically what I am doing with my rusty festy. Or just find something out of the ordinary to do to it. Then let people's egos deflate like a woopie cushion when you decimate them between stop lights with what looks like a complete piece of crap.

[monkeykiller1996]

^i like your idea the whole point of a fast festi at least for me is to make a bad ass sleeper anyway and i have no problem with a non factory look

[ottoparts]

All the spots shown are not visible once your interior is back in. Therefor I say patch it up. It doesn't have to look like a beauty queen under the carpet.
Other than the wheel well, everything is flat. I had to patch my drivers floor in the same spot when I first got it.
What better way to break in that new welder you are getting.

[william]

I would do some more digging and make sure it's not worse. Most of the time it will rust from the inside out. This is just packed together sheet metal and by time it shows it on the out side the inside could look like mine.
This one heading to the scraper and I do autobody for a living .
Is it fixable sure is it worth it. . No way.

[blake4591]

I just picked up a new car when I encounter a similar amount of rust on my project car. I could have fixed it but I'm not really into body work and already have other cars to fix rust on. Clean festiva bodies aren't unbelievably expensive, however they are a little rare in the mid-west. If you just want to go drag racing occasionally you could probably just patch up the holes pretty well and call it a day. Also if you plan to continue to drive the car in the winter I would just patch it up since no matter what you do it's going to end up rusting.

[David88]

Imagine the rust we'll have to deal with fixing if we want to drive a Festiva in another 15 -20 years. I say patch it up. This is the perfect first job for your new $1k welder.

[Fecomatter]

Wow I thought my rust was bad. Just Fix it, all you have to do is make it better/safer than it is now and its fine. Like everyone said, its under the carpet and behind the bumper.

[bhazard]

It's well worth it to travel south to find a clean body. At least to me.

[Festiva_Fred]

If I were you I'd restart with a solid shell, even if you fix all that rust its likely, almost certain there's rust inside other places that hasn't made it to the surface yet like others said. I'd save all the good parts for spares and put time into a solid shell.

[Advancedynamix]

A guy I used to do autocross with liked to race VW rabbit GTIs. He would purposely look for rusty cars because they were lighter. He was an odd duck, but he was fast, so I couldn't argue with his theory.

I would build a cage in the car that supported all the important structural parts. Then replace the rusty floor with aluminum. Don't use rivets though, they tend to pop out randomly and make sparks when you activate your second bottle of nitrous and shift onto 13th gear. I saw that happen in Fast and the Furious 1. It looked pretty scary.

[monkeykiller1996]

^if that happens when activating the second bottle imaging what would happen with a third and i thought it had 15 gears lol but on a serous note i thing what i'm going to do about the rust is dig into it as much as i can and replace as much as possible and then find some one to make me a roll cage just for extra support just in case i miss something for now on the cars isn't a winter car anymore(got my 4X4 bronco for that) i tried driving it this past winter and well lest just say it makes a better sled that a car in the snow and ice