rocker panel repair
 

hi,i took my car to the garage for the yearly inspection and there where 3 points i have to look at, first thing, one of the struts needs to be replaced,second,the abs /trac off light came on:( ,and there was a hole rusted in the rocker panel on the drivers side.
so i fix the abs /trac off light with some contact spray,and replace the strut.
the mechanic,also owner of the garage offers me to use his car lift and tools to lower the cost and repair the rocker panel by my own.
the mechanic also do restoration on old cars and watching sometimes over my shoulder,my son in law give's me a helping hand.
first thing to do was take of the side skirt,after done that we located the rust aria and poked around with a screwdriver.


we started to cut the aria out.


it was pretty infected,so we cutting some more.

now its time to take all the rust away and clean the place ,after that we started with welding a new sheet of metal in it.

now we sprayed sinc spray on it, and let it dry,we finished it with an special oil what dry up with a hard surface,rust have no change to come back again.

time for the second sheet of metal.

we use spot welding,to avoid to much heat,the mechanic told us to do that,we grind off the spots.

time to finish,drill the hole's for the side skirts,sinc spray on the new metal,and sprayed trough the hole's with the special oil,so the whole rocker panel is protected inside.

last thing we did,kit the seals with a polymer kit,and sprayed the whole rocker panel with bitumen spray,forgot to take pics of that,sorry:( ,

now my car can hit the road again, he passed the inspection, the oil i talked about is Castrol Rustilo 181,sorry for some bad english,i tought it where a good idea to post it here.

greetings from holland and have a nice day :coolio:

I always wonder how you get the rocker cover off.
I tried it once but even after loosening all the bolts and clips - that thing would not butch a bit.
I wonder how to push it forward, when quite a bunch of cover goes into the rear wheel well.

Good pics :) And glad u were able to save that spot.
Something German TÜV is very keen and eager to poke with the screwdriver :(

I took the screws on both side's out,under the skirt there where some hole's,I don't know if there where screws in before.
On the rear end i pushed the side a little towards myself and removed the first clip from the body with a screwdriver than i push the side skirt gently forward to the front wheel, the side came off and the white clips stay in the body,I removed the white clips with some pliers.

Very well done! I'm getting my rockers fixed at the end of this month if all goes well!

if you didn't add drain holes or fill the hole in the rear wheelwell down at the bottom where the rocker and inner fenderwell meet you'll end up having the same issue down the road.

where the 2 sheetmetals come together in the wheel well is a gap between the 2 piece which allows water into the rocker and because of no drain holes it sits in there and rusts.

i figured this all out on mine cause mine was rusted. (yes mine). not as bad as yours but had to replace a section.

Thanks for the tip Oldsman,I'm going to look at it.

Wish I could find a shop around here that would do this exact thing. Nobody I talked to will even touch it when it comes to cutting out pieces and welding sheet metal. They all want to replace the entire quarter panel costing 1000's of dollars.