New from the Rust Belt, Bodywork question

[poisonousbeef]

Hey guys, I'm new to the site. I'm a law student/researcher in Pittsburgh, PA. I've been working with Hondas for a while but I'm in love with hatches in general so I just bought my first Festiva (I also own an 82 Renault LeCar and our garage currently houses a couple of Yugos as well). It's a 91 that I bought for $75 when the PO was quoted several hundred at another garage to replace the rotors and the e-brake cable. I had my garage slap some new rotors on in about 20 minutes (we expected it to be much more of a pain) and she's on the road! Officially the cheapest running and driving vehicle I've ever picked up!

But ohhhh she needs work. Aside from a terribly leaky valve cover and the ebrake replacement, the biggest problem I have is rust in the rear quarters. The front corners of the rear wheel well are gone, as in not there. At some point the area was pretty heavily patched with some fiberglass but it's a mess. Christmas break means it's time to put in some work, but I'm wondering what solutions anyone has used. With Hondas, we pretty much have to find a donor car from a yard that will let us remove the quarter panel (since I've never found a place that will let you cut), which you can then cut and weld in or just hang the whole new quarter. I haven't thoroughly inspected the Festiva so I don't know exactly what that body panel is like, but does anyone make a replacement panel? (On a side note, why is it that I can find 12x12 replacement panels for our Ford Explorer and about every damn truck on the road, but I have never seen anyone make them for any car I've ever owned?)

The rust means it's probably not the greatest platform, but I'm sure it can be nursed along for at least a couple of years. I've already found a couple of B6 motors for less than $200 so I'm looking forward to getting to know this hatch and maybe doing a swap. Here's a couple quick pictures of the car when we brought it home:



Finding a new hatch is on the list as well, that rust is even worse on the inside!

[skeeters_keeper]

looks like you need a new hatch!


the 1/4 panels are very hard to replace as a whole, from the looks of your car its no worse than Stefan's, look up the pics of what he did to fix the exact same rust areas.

I would suggest doing the same as he did instead of trying to replace the whole panel, other than the rust looks like a very clean car! most festivas are full of dents b/c the the super thin body, you got lucky!

congrats on your new purchase and welcome to the site!

[WmWatt]

Which rust belt?

The cause of the rust in the lower forward part of the rear wheel wells is the tight space between the outer and inner panels stuffed with foam. There is no condensation drainage or ventilation in there. Maybe the foam is in case of noise? I'm the original owner of a 1989 model and have patched the wheel wells twice, about five years apart. Sand down, drill some holding holes, patch with polyester reinforced with glass fibre.

Another method is to cut out a section, then cut a piece of sheet metal to fit and attach with pop rivets. The edges have to bee bent to depress the heads of the rivets. Fill with whatever, smooth, and paint.

Hope that helps.

[poisonousbeef]

I looked at Stefan's posts and it's certainly an impressive recovery (I wish I could really tear mine down like that and clean it all up underneath but an upcoming wedding = no major projects for now). I'm just gonna have to take a close look at how pervasive the rust is in my quarters. Hopefully a little sheet metal and filler will get me there, I haven't ever used pop rivets but I've certainly seen them. We've got a guy in the garage that is a decent welder (though nobody does commercial bodywork) so I might beer him into putting the metal on there. If the festiva body panels are so thin, however, maybe some pop rivets would be easier?

Sorry I hadn't set my profile. I live in Western Pennsylvania and everything rusts around here. They salt the roads like crazy all winter and our weather will go from well below freezing in the morning to 45 during the day and back to freezing at night. It all wreaks havoc on vehicles. A lot of people get "oil undercoating," which is to say very heavy oil is sprayed all underneath the car. It's a big mess if you want to work on it later but supposedly it's worth it for preventing the rust. People that do it seem to get the coating put on before each winter. I've never really looked into it but the local legend is that it helps a lot.