So I've been taking forever to get this fixed. Driver side wasn't too bad, rusted through but I only had to cut very little sheet metal out. Passenger side is a whole different story. The more I cut the more I find rust, or paint bubbling. This is what I'm dealing with. What do you guys think? Doable by myself? I'm starting to think that I should just take the car to the body shop and have them replace the whole rail...but that's going to be costly.









Test fitting some sheet metal but I somehow cut it too short

I know this is an old thread but how did it turn out Im in the same boat with my gsx and the more I cut the more rust I see.

That's a pretty good looking replacement piece. Did that replace the entirety of the rusted metal? I'd suggest, if you have too much more in complex areas like that, finding a donor car to yank a corner off of. Piecing it together with multiple weld joints is a lot of work and creates a lot of potential weak points (even if you're an excellent welder!). It looks like you've already got most of the work done for pulling the inner fender. Then it would just be a matter of welding the new one in place. May be able to buy an OEM replacement from a shop or online too which would eliminate the need for the donor car.

If this is all the rust in that area though I'd stick with that. Like I said, the piece looks like it fits great and shouldn't be a bear rolling some beads on. Nice work!

I would have done this to my GST but I wanted a GSX so I went with swapping motors route.

How do the rear inner panels looks on the back?

Just too much rust elsewhere to deal with, if you have OCD, you'll never unless finish unless you go with a shell swap!

Props for taking this on, probably one of the hardest things to achieve "rust free"

Can't wait to see the finished results!

I can't believe it's been 4 years! wow...

I started welding it into place but never finished. I'm little fuzzy on details but I think I ended up using two pieces. One for the rail and one to go over the top (the one you see covering everything). If you want I can take a picture of what I did and post. It's still sitting in the garage

Yes please it looks great. I'm thinking I should use 14 or 12 gauge sheet metal for more support.

I'm not a body work expert but the sheet metal I cut out was 20ga and that's what I've used to patch it up. I guess thicker would be easier to weld but harder to cut and bend. Shears I have only cut up to 18.

It looks like I've used 3 pieces. One to replace all that rusted rail you can see in the first pic in the original post. Second piece to patch that opening from the top and third piece from the bottom inner fender. Basically whatever I removed I welded a new piece in.

Looks awesome man. I'm undesided if I'm going to repair mine or replace them. My driver side is gone

If you can fit a fist through the hole, it needs replacing

Here are pictures of my strut tower that had rusted out. I found a donor in the junk yard and cut the strut towers out and then welded those into place on my car.

Looks as involved as my rust repair that I'm halfway through. Have you got the car aligned yet? I'm curious how that worked out.