Rust

[Anonymous]

i have a 5 door nova with rust on both rear arches. It isn't to bad just on the sill(hasn't gone through the metal yet)
got a quote to replace the whole rear panel and spray it all up for ?700 (nearly the value of the car). What other options have i got.
sand down, hammerite, respray

any other options ?
cheers

[Anonymous]

What i did was get a power sander on it (or similar) and completely removed all of the rust which was about 3 inches from the edge of the wheel arch. I then used some mesh and shaped it to the wheel arch and used filler quite thickly. It takes a lot of sanding but it is possible to recreate the wheel arch. Use a anti-rust primer and the paint from a vauxhall dealer. I did this about a year ago with my nova and you honestly cannot tell that it is not the original wheel arch. Just spend some time on it and it should only cost you ?20 max!

[Anonymous]

best way to rid the rust is to grind it out as much as possible then lightly tap the area with a sharp hammer, back of a claw hammer or somthing similar. this might leave a hole but its best to seperate the rust. if there is a hole fill it with fibreglass then grind to shape, either way it will now need smoothed with filler and primed. once the primer is dry give a quick scuff with a brillo pad then use STONE CHIP, this has a textured finish and will look better if you do the full sill, it hides any dodgy repairs aswell so it doesnt need to be perfect. once dry use the brillo pad again to scuff the stone chip then paint it, you might even get away with doing the sill black depending how high the rust went.
?700 is far to expensive, you were probably only quoted that because the bodyshop didnt want to do it, they dont like rusty jobs!

[Anonymous]

My mate has a Mk2 5door astra with a completely roton rear wheel arch. The lip has mostly fallen off its that bad!!! He bought the repair panel for ?13 (the complete arch) then got a quote of ?85 to chop out old, weld in new. fill & spray. Not bad me thinks.

[Anonymous]

"best way to rid the rust is to grind it"

no. if u want to kill the rust blast the car
u can get the whole car done for cheaper than 700

[Anonymous]

I used the "weld in a new arch" option.

It was only ?12 a side for the repair panels, but I welded them in my self.....cost less than ?50 for the welder but needs time a patience to do yourself, plus you have to be able to weld and have somewhere warm and dry to do the work.

If I was doing it again (which I'm going to have to do on my GTE on one side), I'll pay a body shop to do it, but that ?700 quote was a major rip-off!

I was quoted ?25 from my local garage to weld in the new piece, but that was for me doing to prep work and the finishing afterwards....which is what I wanted.

You can go the body filler route as it can be very effective......I've used that method a million time in the past, especially on my first Nova which was a 1983 A-plate with almost 200K miles on the clock!
The bottom of the passenger's door was made of fibreglass and it lasted once done!.....just make sure you grind out all of the rust from the affected area first or it WILL come back.....sanding with sand paper might make it look like all the rust is gone, but it only need microscopic bits left behind for it to start to spread again. So called rust killers often don't do their job either, so you can't 100% rely on those!