allright guys. we all know the rust-prone wheel wells.
mine are pretty bad i would say. the body is flexing when i accellerate or decel. heres a little clip to show what i mean. i apologise for it being so big and in quicktime, but thats how my camera takes them.
its like this on both sides.

body flex 4.5mb

i will probably be welding in some bracing soon. cause its a bit swervy on the road. hehehe

 

WOW! Thanks for the vid. I didnt realize how much stress is in that area! Heres some links from a recent discussion on the SA22C mailing list (you should subscribe if your not a member already).

http://www.marx7.org/~slelievre/RX-7...wellclose1.jpg

http://www.marx7.org/~slelievre/RX-7...pperrepair.jpg


http://www.marx7.org/~slelievre/RX-7...siderepair.jpg

 

More. But looking at that flex, I dont think this will be as effective as I thought.

http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/479957/8

http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/479957/9

 

HOLY ****!!!

I was planning on buying the rear wells out of an RX-7 at the scrapper... But I think I'll reinforce that area with some angle iron and heavy gauge sheet steel...

 

This prolly explains why you guys get rust there, because the metal is moving on itself and prolly cause very small stress cracks, and then eventually exsposed to elements and rusts. I have 109k on my sa22 and it doesnt have rust like actual fbs have. I have a bunch of other braces that run near the wheel well, which now I presume keep it from doing that mabye?

 

wow, rx7Carl thats a really good-looking repair job on there. im not sure how im going to go about fixing mine yet, but yours looks great. since i am planning on cutting the roof off i will probably be introducing some sort of roll bar / cage so i may end up with more than some new plate there. good informative pics, thanks

 

Looking at that It looks to me like the wheel tub its self has to be intact. Mine are just like the turds. I am going to try and fix them. the rest of my wheelwells look o.k.
might just see if I can find someone with a welder.

I was thinking of trying some Devcon titanium putty.
Put a new peice of metal on the outside of the mount screw it on after grinding out center part that is rusted,
fill the inside up with this stuff,it is machineable epoxy
grind it and put another plate on the inside then drill
that and sandwich it with some bolts.

But welding is the best way to go I wish we could
find a cheap universal way to fix these mounts.
I might just seal them.

This is going to be my parts car in the future so
I am not to worryed about it

 

I fixed both my wheelwells. Well, my dad fixed them. He did all the welding, but now they are like new. Check it out on my cardomain site. Its in my sig.

 

I want to take a look at that video but will have to wait until I'm in my office and have a cable connection. In any event, let me say that as far as I can tell, I'm not experiencing any flex or handling problems, either before or after my bin rust repair.

The key is how extensive the rust damage has become. If structural metal has rusted out, sure, you need to do something more extensive than carefully covering up the holes with sheet metal patches.

But if the rust is less extensive, as in the Turd, you can fix the problem and prevent it from getting worse by patching up and getting rid of the rust.

What follows is some dialogue with another list member, if you are interested:

Hi Ray-
Did you post these on the List? There was someone asking about repairs in
this area and you are now an obvious expert
A question: did the rust start UNDER the car around the upper link mounts??
Or where?

Yes these are of my 85 GSL, the Turd. When I got the car in an ebay auction the first thing I did after getting it home was take out the storage bins and check for rust. I found flaking metal and paint where the moisture sets in under there, no doubt a result of the car's Ohio residence through much of its life.

I knocked out the rust and damaged metal with a hammer and scraper to get down to solid metal, leaving the rust holes that you can see in the pictures (I didn't start taking pics until after I had the metal in, so no views from the inside, unfortunately).

I think the rust started inside the car, from moisture and water being trapped under the storage bins - I noticed on my beige 84 that the insulation was damp under there, although I got it dried out before the rust got started on that one. Now I routinely pull the storage bins every few months to check for rust and give the area a good chance to dry out.

In any event, after getting all the rust out and cleaning it up so that I had some good metal to work with, I judged that none of the damage was structural or extensive, so I decided to use the sheet metal trick, something I had done before on some old Volvos with good results. This is important, of course, if there is any structural weakening, a more extensive repair should be done.

However, under the right circumstances and if the repair is done right, that is you secure the metal tightly and saturate the area with epoxy resin to keep more water from getting in, it should last several years - I haven't seen one go bad yet.

You can see in the pics some fence wire over the driver's side rear wheel well, this was already there when I got the car, a fairly good repair job by a previous owner to patch a rust hole in the upper part of the wheel well. Basically they used the wire mesh as a backing for a fiber glass patch. Pretty funky, but it is at least a couple years old now, with no sign of giving out.

Again, the key is to make sure the final repair is seamless both inside and out, with a good coat of epoxy or fiberglass, to keep any moisture from creeping in.

The Turd also has some soft spots on the undercarriage, but nothing serious - I scraped these down and patched them up with some fiber glass while I doing the bin rust repair. Of course the car will eventually rust out, but like I said earlier, I put so many miles on it that other problems are more likely to convert the Turd to my parts car, probably in another couple of years or three or five. Then I'll start driving the 84 again, a kind of rotary nirvana.

So, don't show this to a body shop - they will flinch, either because the work is so shoddy or because they know it will take work away from their shop, I'm not sure which. But it works for me, was cheap and at least as much fun as doing a brake job. Send me some photos of your bin rust, I'd be glad to offer my "expert" opinion!

Ray

 

None of those are mine. Those were extracted from a disscussion this week over on the SA22C mailing list.

 

The only way the flexing would affect the rust is if it breaks the weather seals between the multible sheets of metal in the tire wells.

But that is probably the cause for the seal breakdown.

 

I'm in the same boat, my SA has the same mileage and the only rust it has is in the rear quarter panels behind the wheels. I have no rust whatever in the usual spots along the wheel well or underneath.

There could very well be something to the theory that the crash brace helps prevent the rust problems that the later FB's had.

 

OK, I looked at the video and saw the flex. I think the difference between this car and mine is that the triangular bracket must be structurally compromised in the car in the video. From the inside you can see that the rust hole along the seam extends up past where this bracket ends, suggesting that it has rusted through. A look from the outside would confirm this.

I was fortunate with the Turd in that these plates were still structurally sound, even with the hole rusted in the middle. Apparently the bent lip around the edge gives them most of their strength, so the hole in the middle isn't such a problem.

In any event, as I mentioned before, I am not seeing any of this flexing - if I was my epoxy patch job would surely be cracking and delaminated. The metal on the inside might provide some structural strength, but I don't think it could handle the kind of flexing seen in the video.

So, maybe we should list my bin rust treatment under preventative maintenance rather than bin rust repair, I certainly wouldn't recommend my patch approach for a car that is as badly rusted as the one in the video. On the other hand, it might keep your car from getting that badly rusted in the first place.

Ray