Jump to content

How do we feel about rust?


Lanciaman

Recommended Posts

Recently bought a 2008 Honda Jazz.  Face-lift car.  Nice top spec and full honda history.  £2k.  Bought mostly for in laws being here but a standby a good idea. However being a blind bastard missed that it's had the rear arches blown over so no doubt the old rust will come through in the next few weeks. 

My first car decades ago was a fiat 131 supermirafiori. This has left me with a lifetime rust paranoia.   Now the jazz is spot on mechanically.  And is great to jump in and do short trips. In a way I don't care if the arches rust and I just treat them and do some stevie wonder paint every so often.   I actually like the car.   But should I just punt ASAP? Or is life too short to care? It's 12 years old and all cars rust.  So just use it as, a cheap car and get on with it. 

What's the AS consensus? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel about rust the same as I do about football, but football can be ignored, mostly.  Rust can't, it's insidious and works tirelessly while you're not looking, specifically to destroy something you take pride in.  Some of it I can deal with, working single-handed and outdoors with primitive tools, but often it needs someone with better skills than mine, so the bill quickly outweighs not only my ability to pay it, but also the value of the car; even the sentimental value, and I'm extremely sentimental.  Or some might say just mental....

At 12 years old, if it was cheap enough, it can be treated as disposable (but still try and get a couple of years out of it!).  The problems really start when you have serious investment in a car because, yes, one thing you can be sure of is, they WILL rust.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 year old snotter! Not worth worrying about, tart it up as and when needed.

The gearbox will shit itself before you have to worry about rust anyway.

Give it a regular jet wash under the arches to try and hold back the tide.

Get 2-3 years out it with simple servicing then look to bin it once a massive bill comes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Use and enjoy while keeping it looking presentable and preserving structural integrity so that it's tolerably safe.

The snag is that if you grow to love the car you'll want to 'save' it from the inevitable ravages of time.  This will test your moral fibre as well as your skills and your purse.

I loved my Hyundai Stellar. I know, the world is a strange place full of even stranger folks. Anyway, I owned it from 2010 to 2017 and enjoyed it. It was my 2nd experience of Stellar ownership. Age and health caused me to part with it. Rust was its main problem. Subsequent owners have managed to enjoy it until its upkeep was in direct competition with life's circumstances or indeed common sense. A tragedy that it has probably reached the end of the road?  No. In the end it is just a car.  On the other hand, if the current owner fixes it I would be delighted 😀😀.

Edited by RayMK
moral, not morale
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah I dropped the ball on it and didn't check it enough. Really should have known better but Japanese never the best fur rust resistance.   Mechanicals and electrics yes, rust no.   But no point crying about it. It's a nice car for what it is.  Perhaps a bit of work to keep the rust at bay and it not looking 100% is a better bet than reliability nonsense. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Lanciaman said:

Recently bought a 2008 Honda Jazz.  Face-lift car.  Nice top spec and full honda history.  £2k.  Bought mostly for in laws being here but a standby a good idea. However being a blind bastard missed that it's had the rear arches blown over so no doubt the old rust will come through in the next few weeks. 

My first car decades ago was a fiat 131 supermirafiori. This has left me with a lifetime rust paranoia.   Now the jazz is spot on mechanically.  And is great to jump in and do short trips. In a way I don't care if the arches rust and I just treat them and do some stevie wonder paint every so often.   I actually like the car.   But should I just punt ASAP? Or is life too short to care? It's 12 years old and all cars rust.  So just use it as, a cheap car and get on with it. 

What's the AS consensus? 

Your wheelarches being blown over are okay in the grand scheme of rusty stuff. It becomes not okay when the MoT man fails it for being less than 30cm from the rear seatbelt mounts or suspension mounts. It's a 2008 Jazz so it'll be zinc coated in some form, so I doubt the rust will progress that quickly, certainly slower than most 90s Japanese cars! I'd do what the others have said and keep using it, being sure to wash out the arches and vactan the area when it begins bubbling through the paint. I'm fairly sure the gearbox will force your hand before the bodywork ever will.

Incidentally, my grandmother had two 131 supermirafioris back then, and had both ziebarted to make sure they lasted a bit longer than two years. Seems 131s do have a tendancy to give their owners post traumatic rust disorder.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

48 minutes ago, leanycan said:

Have you seen some Mazda 3's of that age... yikes. 

I must admit I loved my 2002 C5 for not rusting. My dad’s 1999 xantia had no rust either at 16years old.  The Mercedes’s bubbling again on the rear arches. I’m deciding whether to ignore for another year or so and get rid of it or spend £4000+ on a full bare metal respray and repair. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm ignoring a bubbly front wing on my xsara for the winter, but really should do something with it next year before* it makes the car look tatty

Bar that whatever corner I'm changing the pads on or have the wheel off for gets a good brush out and wire brush where needed to spade the dirt out and job jobbed. If I'm feeling very fancy I'll have the pressure washer and arch liners out but I've not done that for years... 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Lanciaman said:

 However being a blind bastard missed that it's had the rear arches blown over so no doubt the old rust will come through in the next few weeks. 

My previous experience with Honda's (CRV's) is that bodies don't rust even with scrapes going right through the paint. Subframes and suspension arms can end up looking like they've been packed in salt for a decade though. 

Do you have reason to suspect rust?  These cars are giffer owned and evidence of "touch parking" isn't a rare thing! Could be it's had a pile of giffer scrapes repainted and you're only noticing it on panels where the paint's been (badly) blended.

If it were me I'd look underneath. If there's no bad rust on the underside then I don't think you'll have an issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, blackboilersuit said:

My previous experience with Honda's (CRV's) is that bodies don't rust even with scrapes going right through the paint. Subframes and suspension arms can end up looking like they've been packed in salt for a decade though. 

Do you have reason to suspect rust?  These cars are giffer owned and evidence of "touch parking" isn't a rare thing! Could be it's had a pile of giffer scrapes repainted and you're only noticing it on panels where the paint's been (badly) blended.

If it were me I'd look underneath. If there's no bad rust on the underside then I don't think you'll have an issue.

Good theory but poked under the arches. Seems to be double skinned and the inner skin lifted.   It's not the end of the world. Not like its going to crumble to dust in 6 months.  Just not a fan of rust bubbles!  What surprises me most is my own attitude to it now.  Past days it would've been a disaster. Now it's just oh well, live with it and get use out the car. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Japanese cars are more prone to issues on the body, but generally, moderns don't really rust structually. They get mega scabby, they look untidy, but they don't suffer the rampant terminal rot of cars of old.

Sure, some bolt on panels well eventually let go. and things like subframes etc will eventually be a concern, but in my experience, you can see rust on a car and even 3-4 years down the line, it's barely accelerated past where you first saw it. I guess they made some pretty major advancements in galvanising techniques.

Compare to, say, a Discovery 1, where you can see the first signs of rot in the usual areas and it will be a holed MOT fail within 3 months....

Or a Lancia Y10, where the rot starts from the inside out and by the time you see surface rust, the floor is partially detached because the sill has just crumbled off.

i wouldn't worry until it starts getting picked up as a concern at MOT's.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, leanycan said:

Probably have spent most of their lives living right by the coast or in Scotland. 

I think it was a genuine problem, I have seen some disgraceful examples. What I couldn’t understand was how ours was so rust free, it was immaculate and I mean immaculate. How can a company have such poor quality control where some are perfect and others are ready for scrap?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...