So lately i have been cutting out some unwanted rust that i found when i took my interior out. The rust was pretty bad, mostly on the floorpan but some seems to have gone to the inner rocker. Im not to familiar with body work but today when cleaning the area of some rust so i can get my friend to weld in some new metal a whole piece of something fell off. Now i believe it is part of the inner rocker? But again im not to sure about the body parts. I know it was part of the seam where you would put the jack to change a tire(using the stock jack). Is a hefty little piece. So im wondering if i should be very concerned about this thing just kinda rusting itself off.


It fell from right in the bottom left of this picture right up near the rusted part of my drivers fender that will need replacing soon.

 

I have been down this road before.

Are your rear quarters rusty?
Are your strut towers rusting?
does your car handle funny?

If yes to these.
I recomend to start looking for a new rust free body. Its sad, but investing in a suken ship is not morth the money or time. Took me a while to let go of my 85, i was stuburn. After spending all my money on it I wish i would have just gotten a new body sooner.

 

im hoping my car isnt like that inside
i think ill take a look at it tommorrow.

 

Definitely start looking for a new car. Anything can be rebuilt, but it gets *real* pricey when you start dealing with car-cancer.

 

The rust is pretty bad, but I think you can save it if the entire floor pan does not look like that. I would wire brush all the rust and weld some pieces of metal in to fill the gaps then POR-15 everything (top and bottom of floor pan).

I am not a big fan of this "abandon ship" feeling that everyone seems to have the second they see rust. You can buy an entire new floor pan for $400 from classicindustries.com which is the way I would go before junking the car. Just make sure that there is noting super important rusting out like strut towers.

1/4 panel rust doesn't mean anything, mine are rusted pretty bad on the one side and a little on the other but the rest of the car i hardly even rusted. I even had a small hole in the same spot on the driver side, just not as large as the one in your car. It is a very common place for these cars to rust out and doesn't mean the car is a rust bucket.

Its up to you what you do, just don't abandon the car because of floor pan rust. It shouldn't cost you more than $150 to fix the floor pan (if you do not need to buy a new floor pan). Just $80 for 2 quarts of POR-15 and then $37 for metal ready and some money for whatever else is needed.

 

Actually the car handles like a champion. TIght in corners and it snaps back quickly. Handles better than my friends 01 z28 with a ls1 in it. This is the only rust on the body, besides surface rust on the underside. Struts are fine, Rear quarters are fine, up under the front corners is fine. Only problem are two small holes on the inner fender, and this big one thats getting patched till i can get new floorpans because well there is a rather large hole that was patched behind the drivers seat and i have realized i do need a new floorpan but only one, the pass side is totally fine. So again back to the question, will this matter badly, like i dont even know that that little seam is called, but is it something that can be repaired somewhat easily? Right now im just patching the hole, this summer im getting a whole new floorpan. Would this seam come with a new floorpan? It kinda looks like its where the floorpan meets the inner rocker but again i have no clue.

 

I didn't see anyone responding to your question if the piece that fell off is a concern. What fell off is part of your fender and unibody. That area / portion of the fender bolts to your unitbody. That's the only area on the lower fender behind the wheel that attaches itself to the unibody so now the fender could be succeptable to vibration and such. Did / does your car have gfx? IF so that helps a little (marginal) in keeping that area of the fender snug.

 

Yea my car is a 91 rs with the gfx that go accordingly. I guess its not that big of a deal and can be fixed when i get a new drivers fender and tackle that rust this summer than. That whole portion of the car is kinda rusted and messed up so it was hard to tell where it came from. thanks though i thought it was something to really worry about.

 

Oh man that thing is bad. AC's post is telling you that you SHOULD be worried, not that you shouldn't. You do not want your ground effects to be holding your fender on.

 

I actually removed the drivers side fender recently and its bolted on to something else on the bottom also......so i guess i should rephrase this, its something that can wait till i get new floorpans and get rid of the inner fender rust this summer. I just didnt want my car falling apart as i was driving back to school.

It can be fixed though right? Like if i buy new floorpans will it come with this seam?

 

Sure, it can be fixed. The floor pan won't come with the inner rocker area though (the vertical portion of the metal). When you get a new pan, it will become obvious where patches will need to be fabbed up.