So should I be crying, or thankful that it isn't as bad as it could be. Took the passanger side rocker off tonight, as I pulled it free a butt load of dirt came out. I immediately felt like somebody had kicked me in the nads! However, when I looked at the long it did not seem to be too bad. There was some rust along the seam below the jack hole, and in a place I was not expecting it, there was some rust up front near the wheel well. Please let me know how depressed I should be!

Thanks!

Oh yeah the pics, this is how much dirt came out!

more pics

more..

pic of the long

rear of the long

Mine looked worse when I first bought it. Yours actually looks pretty good based on the picture. The only real way to tell how bad it actually is, is to clean the area really good with a wire brush and poke around with an ice pick or screwdriver...

and rust near front of the long

hell, thats not rust! poke at some of the rusty areas with a screwdriver, and see if it goes through. If it does, make a patch and weld it up. clean up the long and remove all the rust, then coat it with POR 15... your lucky

You need to poke around in there and open some of the rust up and make the repairs that are
needed.

not bad at all!
put a wirebrush on your drill and take clean up the suspect parts

Rust? What rust? From my point of view that is factory perfect!

The good news is that the parts showing rust are not structural and can be easily replaced/repaired. But do get it fixed - rust spreads.

yeah, it looks good. I'd check the place where your last pic came from, but the rest looks very nice.

ha! that's nothing! Throw a party for heaven's sake!

On mine i grabbed the jack tube and yanked it right off!

jack donut underneath car could be ripped off too if i wanted to.



brent

The front part needs to be opened up...there is some stuff in there.

The jack post (IMHO) needs to be removed.

I would just cut it off with a grinding wheel, grind off the remaining welded on tabs, and clean the area behind it...it it probably full of garbage.

The apply a new jack post.

good luck, its really not that bad at all, fix it, close it up, clean the drain holes and paint everything...

Then remove those rockers once or twice a year and wash that area and clean the drain holes.

Rich

What Rich said. Only I would suggest cutting the bottom off of the jack post. That way you can see if the whole thing NEEDS to come off or not, but I'm betting when you cut the bottom you'll get a bit more dirt/rust falling out of it.

You're firmly in 'thankful that it isn't as bad as it could be' mode.

Get a new jack post. Repair the other spots (weld in new metal or find someone who can). Prime, touchup paint and do an annual inspection.

E.

Being that everything I do gets sandblasted to bare metal, I've been doing some thinking about after the etching and epoxy priming the inner rockers, covering them with a spray on bed liner. Any thoughts positive or negatively?

about to go see what mine look like- was wondering tho- what would be the negative side of making this area completely closed so the water/rust/dirt cant get back in at all after repair? as long as its done right and the repair is sealed against rust etc why not just eliminate the need to have to remove rockers now and then to "clean under them" at all. just something that made me think, things like this we try to make sure cant happen again down the road on trucks and other stuff ive built/fabbed in the years working as a welder

Pulled the driver side rocker off, and it is better than the other side. Only rust at all is around the jack hole (bottom seam), similar but not as bad as the passanger side. I will be cleaning those up this week, hopefully nothing too bad is lurking underneath!

Its a good thing you caught when you did, I would do what Rich said.

Will do! Thanks for the advice. My first 914 was plagued with rust issues in the hell-hole and underneath area. So I was nervous about what I would find. I have had the car since August and was wondering what I might find, guess I got lucky!

Thanks all!

Ok I opened up thew bottom of the jack posts tonight and as expected a bunch of rust and crap came falling out. The good news is that the metal behind it seems to be fairly solid. So as a total newbie when it comes to this kind of stuff how should I proceed. By the way the jack tubes are fine, you can jack up the car with them on either side. Cut off the jack post covers and clean up the metal underneath? What do the jack posts do other than cause rot? Could you cut them off and leave them off? Or do they serve some kind of function?


Thanks,

Bert

OK, this was before I became a full fledged member here, but mine looked about the same. I just ground off the bad part, wire brushed, and used marine grade rustoleum (the ugly red stuff) in the area.

So I have no 'bottoms' on my jack posts and no place to accumulate water and junk. Can still lift car with stock jack (I did it pretty slowly the first time). IMHO we all spend too much time trying to keep the water out of these cars, rather than letting them drain.

I remove the rockers and clean all the drain holes at least once a year, and that's in SoCal.