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General Car Related Discussion.To discuss anything that is related to cars and automotive technology that doesnt naturally fit into another forum catagory.
I've been quoted, worst case scenario, £500 to repair my inner arches on My Fiesta Si where the arch meets the chassis rails. The chassis legs themselves are pretty solid, no holes in the legs but the arches are gone. I've had a good poke around the area, and a small 1" is now about 3" across but the rest is solid. This has effected both rear arches in the same place. The garage who quoted me, are landrover restoring specialists and looking at their work on Facebook, they know what they're doing. I'm a bit stuck as to go ahead with it though, the car other niggly issues with it, mainly water ingress. Does anyone think this is overpriced? Any welders in the northwest? I would have a pop at doing it myself, but with it being so close to a suspension mounting, It's a bit out of my depth. The rest of the car is good, front wings, inner/outer sills, floorpan are all solid after lots of work in those areas.
Is it just an old hack daily driver or your pride and joy? We got a mobile welder round our way that is stupid cheap and on an old banger we just let him loose as its not even worth getting your own welder out over his prices but if it's for a nice car we wouldn't let him near it we'd do it ourselves. For what an old fiesta si is worth and u say u have other problems probably not worth doing unless u can get a cheap mobile welder on the case
No it is my pride and joy haha, it's a 2.0 Zetec build that I've been working on. It's a rolling project and I've put a lot of time into the car, with it being an Si it's very rare, so part of me thinks it's worth sticking with. I'd like to reshell it ideally, but I don't want to end up with another kipper, even standard 1.1's are getting hard to come by for reasonable money
If you can afford it get it done. It doesnt look that bad but sometimes (most of the time) the hole/rust gets bigger.
Brilliant Glenn!
Yes I'd say do it, if its a car you like then why not save it. If people looked at cars on a purely financial basis, no project car would ever be started.
Haha glenn, that's where it belongs. To be honest, it's the other niggly problems with it which is why I'm unsure, but I think these problems have arisen from welding it's had before my ownership. The car is an M reg, so about 20-21? I've had a good session on it with a screwdriver and hammer around the surrounding areas and it's not as bad as it first seemed. Most of the inner arch is rock solid, it's just in the corner where this hole is where it's gone, luckily the chassis rails themselves are solid aswell.
Cheers guys, one of the main reasons I'm unsure is because of the water ingress the car is getting. It seems that the welding the car has had in the past, has made problems. The new plates were welded from underneath, patched over the old holes in the floorpan from underneath. Water seems to be collecting in between these plates, then coming in the inside of the car from the old holes which means I need to drill these plates out, then weld new plates over the top of this. I'd be happy to have a go at welding these, but not the structural parts of the chassis legs as a beginner. Would be a lot easier if someone was selling a decent low mileage poverty model, and then I could just swap the whole lot over into that....
13-12-2015, 09:29 PM
Rear inner arches rotten, worth repairing?
