Rear Axle Rot

[mystro]

uuuuugh! My trusty festiva, has been brought to its knees, I was stopped at a gas station when I happened to notice a hole near my rear axle. I crawled down to get a better look only to find there was a rust hole that when all the way around the rear axle mount, and yep, sure enough same on the other side, must only be love holding this car together, so I very carefully drove her home and parked 'er till i can figure out what to do. Ive seen one other one do this, unfortunatly the owner didnt catch it before it let loose and lets just say it wasn't pretty... anyone else have experience with this issue??

[Bert]

I'm presuming you to be talking about the car body where the pivot bracket and 3 bolts go through on each side of the car. Normally this is a death blow for a Festy, not so much because it is difficult to repair, but because liability concerns will have most welders tell you they won't touch it.
It may be time for you to look for another shell that is not compromised structurally.
In theory you could have someone excise with plasma cutter, or cutting torches, a good set of corners from a southern wreck and weld them into your car but when structural rot is that bad on one area of the car what other areas have gone soft?

[mystro]

I'm presuming you to be talking about the car body where the pivot bracket and 3 bolts go through on each side of the car. Normally this is a death blow for a Festy, not so much because it is difficult to repair, but because liability concerns will have most welders tell you they won't touch it.
It may be time for you to look for another shell that is not compromised structurally.
In theory you could have someone excise with plasma cutter, or cutting torches, a good set of corners from a southern wreck and weld them into your car but when structural rot is that bad on one area of the car what other areas have gone soft?

well the pinch weld is gone from front to back, which isnt as hard as it sounds to replace, also where the floor pan meets the rear section of the car, the seem is starting to rust pretty badly (no holes yet but there will soon be) I have a rust free shell that i may convert all of my LX stuff to, but if as you say that pivot point isnt to complicated a repair i may go that route... cant make up my mind

[Zanzer]

I have a 93 with the same issue and it's basically what turned it into a parts car. Depends on how far along the problem has progressed really. If caught early it can be fixable....although holes are typically a bad indicator. The one I have was too far gone by the time I got the car, which sounds like the same situation you may be in. It may be time to take 2 and make 1 good one.

I'd say disassemble, clean off the rust, and see what you have to work with. If the body mounts are fixable and it's just the axle that looks bad it's easy to swap in a better rear beam.

[mystro]

yes I fear that may be the best solution, after all she has had a good long life, in fact I turned 460,000 not 10 minutes before noticing the hole, may be a sign that its just time to let it go...

[Safety Guy]

If you are committed to Long Term Festivadom, I would suggest stripping your good shell down to the bones and checking and redoing everything that you can't easily get to later on. I'd start with all the hard lines (brakes, fuel, fuel return, etc.), gas tank, heater core, and so forth so you will be reasonably assured of another ten or twenty years of service life. Fix all rust issues at this time, and then spend the right amount of money on replacement parts as your wallet and hopes can afford.

That's how I intend on "modernizing" my fleet as I go along.

Karl

[ckiesman]

mine did the same thing. Luckily I was able to find a welder who would do the work. I only expect to get a few more years out of it, but at least it will buy me some time.

[mystro]

If you are committed to Long Term Festivadom, I would suggest stripping your good shell down to the bones and checking and redoing everything that you can't easily get to later on. I'd start with all the hard lines (brakes, fuel, fuel return, etc.), gas tank, heater core, and so forth so you will be reasonably assured of another ten or twenty years of service life. Fix all rust issues at this time, and then spend the right amount of money on replacement parts as your wallet and hopes can afford.

That's how I intend on "modernizing" my fleet as I go along.

Karl

I am doing exactly that with another one, plus ive got my '90 down to the bare bone doing al the metal work to it as a restoration... I was just hoping that my DD would hold on a little longer until I had one of the others done and could start on it then, guess it will have to get in line :/

[mystro]

mine did the same thing. Luckily I was able to find a welder who would do the work. I only expect to get a few more years out of it, but at least it will buy me some time.

look me up when that day comes, by then I oughta be a wiz atthe metal work on these

[muleskinner]

That happened to mine on the passenger side only. I have welder known to repair trucks and farm equipment frames and he repaired mine at $200!
Here are the before and after picks:
before

after

before

after
[/QUOTE]

[Bert]

I have to say these 'reply' posts are incredible.
Everyone else out there (consumers and fashionistas) jettison "a" car at the earliest excuse (duh, it looks old, the paint has faded, a spring broke, I got fed up with having front bearings replaced for the second time, the radio quit, the guy said I needed a $500 wobble nut & butterfly rod etc) and here we have forum members all prodding you to hang on with a 'sagging' Festy. Trailing arm and body mount rot on a Festy is like splitting/cracking the frame of a domestic pickup truck; most anyone sensible says "throw in the towel man, she's been good to you but she's done for". Maybe 50 years from now some bunch of restoration purists will gloat about how great a shape the ultra rare barn find was, but this is today.
In hindsight; the 93 parts LX that I scavenged before hauling it off for scrap impressed the daylights out of my gearhead MOPAR neighbour (and myself) with how sturdy it was despite the rusted doors and hatch. Festys are many more times than 'one up' on the original engineering concept behind a corrugated box.
None of this helps fix your car but does impress me with how dedicated Festy nuts are in trying to keep these things alive.

[mystro]

Amen

[Bert]

This is a perfect example of why I preach, to anyone that listens, to oil-spray their cars. Mine have perforation holes in them and the odd seams that have let go but all this happened before I got the cars. I oil the bejesus out of everything I own and dab grease on each and every part that gets changed. My 86 pickup truck is still intact and free of holes despite having motored through 25 salty winters (I finally stopped driving it in the winter a couple of years ago). There are professional aerosol and liquid products to combat rust in Canada and the best ones are from RustChek and Krown Rust-proofing. Even ATF is wonderful for coating parts, protecting seams and undercarriages because it displaces water and continually creeps. There is nothing permanent about any of these methods and have to be repeated annually. Folks that tar coat their cars find out after about 5 years that they are worse off than when they started because the material cracks and then traps moisture underneath. Ziebart pioneered asphalt coatings in the early to mid 70s and 10 years later were mostly bankrupted by warranty claims.

[sketchman]

^My latest Festiva that I traded for is rusted through in several places under the undercoating. I'm into the oiling/anti-seizing/etc thing too. We don't have it nearly as bad as the northerners do weather wise, but this is coal country, and EVERYTHING gets coated with this nasty black mud, and sandblasted like crazy by the dust. People here just buy new stuff or let it rot to the ground then scrap it.

[mystro]

well I am feeling a little discouraged, after seeing how bad my 89 was I thought Id check my 90 out real carefully and sure enough, it was bad too. since i am alreadys o far into the body on it I thought Id take a crack at fixing these spots but after about 4 hours of working on it I had made no progress and still could figure out a good way to patch it in that would not cause it to rust right back out, or look decent for that matter. to make matters worse upon closer inspection every one of my festiva has this issue to some extent... sigh