2G Strut tower rust [Merged]

[2slow4utsi]

No one has strut tower rust as bad as mine. I could literally put my hand through the tower and pull on the crank...it's that bad.

 

[slipstream808]

WOW. I don't know if I'd feel safe actually driving a car like that!

 

[gsxAWDdsm692]

Umm me either

 

[Griffeclipsed98]

when i was working at my old shop i noticed this quiet abit, doing inspections ive seen preaty bad in a few of them like on a 97 tsi the lower portion of the core suport witch is three pieces of metal layerd and welded together and along with the strut towers, its another problem area it tends to swell and break down. the main couse of this is due to road salt or just driving on the beach alot. this paticular car i was working on was from ontario canada and another was from michigan, these places salt the heck out of the roads during the long midwest winters. my car has always been here in Washington, lucky for us i guess road salt has been banned in this state, thank you department of fish & wildlife. not to say that we are amuin to rust.

 

[gsxAWDdsm692]

Last time I checked rust is caused by a chemical reaction between air, water and metal. Preferably steel and iron

 

[stephen240]

So I was working on the gst yesterday and snapped a few pics on my BB...
Sorry for crappy pics!
Front bumper off

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Engine bay

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Driver side rust

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Prepar to barf... Passenger side...

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Another shot of passenger side

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When I pulled my bumper off I started really inspecting the car and on the bottom of the radiator support I noticed its mostly rusted out. Which really scares me seeings how there's an engine mount and cross member attached to there. So now I gotta see how much the intial estimate of 600 is gonna jump to... Ugh... I'm considering a new car do to this....

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Oh well I'll keep updating as I progress along.

 

[stephen240]

So the past three days I've been working on the shock towers to stop the rust from spreading until i have money to actually get them repaired.

Let's just say I used three cans of 3M rubberized undercoating to try and stop the spreading. At least for now. I'll post pics either tonight or tomorrow to show you guys what i did!

 

[stephen240]

So here's what I did til I get more money to actually get this fixed!

Driver's side

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Passenger side

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Lower radiator support

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Underneath radiator support

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Driver's side after using rust remover

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Passenger side after rust remover

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Under the rust tower pics:

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While waiting for the rust remover to soak in I cleaned out the intercooler and cleaned up the engine with simple green

Before:

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And looks like I didn't snap a pic of intercooler after I cleaned it, but believe me it was damn shiney inside after

And cleaned engine!

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Bring on the masking!!!

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[stephen240]

And now for the undercoating:

Yes I did spray undercoating on top of the passenger side to stop as much rust as possible

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Radiator support:

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Passenger side:
I sprayed flat rust preventor on top cause it wasnt that bad.

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And this is what happens when you live in the midwest and you start working on your car... It always seems to start rainging. So I threw on a tarp to let the undercoating dry up.

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Unfortunately I didn't snap any photos after I took the masking off, but it all looks really clean and professional. I used two cans on the fronts, and I plan on looking at the rears in the next couple days and see if they need it or not.

Oh yeah during the rain I decided to straighten up my intercooler fins!!

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So what do you guys think of my preventive maintence? The next non rainy day I'll snap photos of the masking off so everyone can see!

 

[EricGRIT09]

Um, looks okay. The thing is that its still going to rust, which I'm sure you realize. The problem is that on your passenger side its really bad, to the point where its going to be unsafe very soon. Mine was that bad, and worse. The strut mount point is going to start flexing and keep breaking away at the rust as it progresses and you will end up with a nice big problem. Of course I say fix it, but for now at the very least put something over that hole to keep water and dirt out of the engine bay.

 

[stephen240]

Oh yeah man I realize it's still gonna rust, this is just til i save up about 800 bucks to get it fixed. And it already is unsafe to drive, but I got nothing else to drive, but I take it really easy over bumps and I only drive like 7 minutes to work and don't do much driving besides that, so its not a huge issue....

But yeah I'm trying to fab up a piece of aluminum so I can bolt on top and possibly underneath to keep as much dirt and water and such out as possible....

 

[gsxAWDdsm692]

Looks good until you can fix it the right way.

 

[DarkSideGS]

Lots of answers and methods to this problem. But has anyone figured out why this happens to 2G's to begin with? I was planning on installing some strut tower bars until the tower started rusting out. Will mounting a bar further jeaopordize the integrity of the tower? I almost feel like the added stress will just pull the strut right out the top of the mount.

 

[stephen240]

Well I hit a pot hole real good the other day and really f'd up my passenger strut tower. Pics to come of damage and body shop work!

 

[ricktb]

^^ you almost sound excited heh

 

[slipstream808]

Well I hit a pot hole real good the other day and really f'd up my passenger strut tower. Pics to come of damage and body shop work!

I look foward to these. And it better include some good photos of the car fixed too!

 

[turbosax2]

Here is my experience with strut tower rust. Hopefully this will help others in the same situation. I did ALL of the work here except for the welding.

This is my car as purchased December 2007. I saw this minor rust, which looked like surface rust, and didn't think it would be too bad to grind it down and repaint. WRONG.

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My car has mostly been sitting since I bought it since I've been working on it. The rust has just gotten worse over time even though it hasn't been driven around. It has always been covered. Obviously the "surface" rust was hiding something much, much worse.

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About two months ago I started prepping my engine pay to paint it. As soon as I dug into the strut tower I knew this was going to be bad. And it was. I started knocking out the loose rust and came up with this.

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I made an initial cut with a dremel and a cutoff wheel to start finding how far the rust went. I had to use a spot weld cutter on a couple spot welds. You can see my mark in this picture for where the next cut would be made. (I forgot to take pictures of the final cutting before having plates welded in.)

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I also forgot to take a picture of the bottom plate before it was welded in. I made 2 plates, one for the bottom and one for the top, both made from 16ga steel. Each took me approximately 5 hours to perfect. This was my first time fabricating to this degree and I solely used a few hammers and a neighbors bench vise. My welder was very pleased with the plates I made and how they fit in. Do your best to perfect the plate – this will make the welders job easy!! My welder didn’t want me to make the plates a “tight” fit. He had me leave a small gap around the edges so he could really get a good weld in there. Since I would be grinding down the weld to blend it in, a lot of the weld material is shaved off. The small gap allowed him to get the weld in there and under the plates so it would really hold good. He used silicon brass welding rod because it could flow in better and get better penetration, and also because it will never rust. Before he welded the plates in I undercoated the bottom sides of them so they won’t rust, and I brushed rust treatment inside the strut tower as best I could just in case I missed any small spots of rust (but I think I got it all out). Here is the welder welding in the bottom plate. I disconnected most of the suspension so he had room to work. The undercoating/rust treatment caught on fire a few times (very small flames) so I stood there with a damp towel to put it out in between his welding.

Sprayed more undercoating in after the bottom plate was in.

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Here is my top plate. He had me drill holes in the top plate where the factory spot welds were so he could tie in the weld there too. There was a special name for this style of welding but I forget the name. I mimicked the stock lines as best I could and used my brothers car constantly to verify the plate was right. It turned out very well I think.

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Here he is welding in the top plate. The same process was used on the bottom plate. He first placed a bunch of spot welds around the plate.

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He had to work VERY slow (cost me 2 hours of labor) because the factory metal is so thin (20ga maybe?). So he would make a small line of weld, then stop, then repeat until the whole weld was done. He also tied in the spot welds here.

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And here is the bottom plate. I had previously undercoated the wheel well so I had to grind it off where he would be welding. I also had to remove some of the factory seam sealer.

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[turbosax2]

At this point the welding was done and the car was whole once more. The engine bay prep continued. Now I had to grind down the welds. I started with a dremel cutoff wheel, and grinded the weld with the edge of the disc. This knocked the weld down fast as a “rough” cut. Be careful not to cut the weld down too far and start cutting into the plate or chassis! Then I tried using various dremel attachments to finish smoothing the weld down, but nothing worked. Then I took a trip to Home Depot and picked up a kit of small sanding discs and polishing pads that attached to my drill – these worked great.

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It took me 5 applications of bondo to get this part perfect. Don’t be fooled, most of the bondo was sanded off each time so this is the LIGHTEST application of bondo possible that I needed. The only purpose of the bondo was to fill in 2 pinholes in the weld, and to smooth out the weld just a little bit (the grinding/polishing pads did very well at blending the weld in), and to smooth the hammer marks from fabricating it.

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Then I sprayed primer on the area, sanded it down smooth, and feathered the edges.

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For the bottom plate, I knocked down the weld some with the dremel cutoff wheel and polished it a little just to knock down the humps, but I left most of the weld there so it stayed as strong as possible. I didn’t care as much if the weld showed some down there. I picked up some seam sealer from the local body shop and redid all of the seams I disturbed. This is important to keep water out in the future. Then I applied undercoating again.

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Finally, I repainted the engine bay.

This whole process took a lot of time, but I’m pretty anal about things. I think it turned out well. The only way anybody can notice that this was done is the lack of a few dimples in that area from the factory spot welds. Also, I made the plates out of thicker metal than the factory had so this should be stronger. Well, maybe not, but I’ve decided to think of this as chassis reinforcement rather than rust repair

 

[LTUSPE]

Looks really good Eric! How long did it take you to remove all the hard lines and firewall stuff? I'm going to be starting this in a few days. My 99 GSX has cancer too...

 

[turbosax2]

Thanks! I have this theory, I think silver cars get the cancer easier than others. I don't personally know of too many people with 99 silver GSX's, but 4 of them I've seen of the 5 I know of have rust.

When I started removing all the lines I already had pretty much everything out of the engine bay. It took me maybe a couple of hours to get them all out and the brake/clutch masters and booster, working very carefully so I didn't damage any of the lines. I had to separate the p/s rack from the steering column so I could remove the lines through the gap between the two. When I reinstalled the lines I had the subframe out so it was much easier, and that way I didn't scratch the engine bay paint at all or the brake lines (which I also painted with them out of the car).

 

[slipstream808]

Clap clap clap... JAW ON THE FLOOR!!! WTFWTFWTF



Mad insane props! I'm impressed. I don't think I'll ever find a welder willing to do some work like that!

 

[turbosax2]

Thanks. The welder is an old school guy, very cool and nice to deal with, and luckily he had a rig to come to me. He was in some very awkward positions too haha. He's located in Mechanicsburg, name is Bill Minnich (Minnich's Garage). He's the best around, really knows his stuff.

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[LTUSPE]

Your pictures just motivated me to go get a tank of C25 for my MIG tomorrow. I might as well start fixing the rust while I figure what to do with my motor.

 

[alice]

Finally, after many years stupidity, I decided to fix the biggest problem I have had with my DSM, the strut tower rust. Last week my friend and I spent about 25 hours combined eliminating the rust on my passenger side strut tower. It was quite a process and took a lot of time but it was nothing a bunch of cigarettes, pizza, and beverages couldn't remedy.

I started cutting off the rusty metal to get to some nice shiny metal and found that I needed to cut a lot more than I had expected. This wasn't a problem because I wanted to make sure I was going to be welding to good metal. I got a hold of some nice 16gauge weld stock from Lowes to use for the replacement metal. After getting the old junk cut out, I cleaned up the edges nice with a Dremel and began preparing the new metal for welding. Bending and shaping is what took the most amount of time. I had to make 3 different pieces and each piece took at least 2 hours to bend and flex into the correct shape. After getting them all ready, I welded the pieces in assuring that I was getting good penetration with each weld. Got all the welding done and it was on to the finishing so my friend busted out the flap disc and started going to town on the welds to got everything seamless and make the strut tower one piece once again

All in all, even though this was only the passenger side, it was certainly worth it. My friend, who is a American Muscle enthusiast and owns 24 more cylinders than I do, had everything tool wise that I didn't and even a few surprise weld finish and paint finish tools. After finishing the welds, we filled in with Bondo, primered, and painted and I am quite happy with the way it turned out. Its very strong and looks quite decent. This weekend I will be tackling the drivers side rust so more fun for me!

 

[Logue]

I have about 2 pints of POR15. Anyone on here have any experience using it? I was planning on using the POR 15 after cutting all the rust out my passenger side strut tower and using it as a sealant. The drivers side doesn't have any visable rust damage yet. I also haven't really gotten in there with a grinder either.

But the plan was to remove driver and pass side steering knuckles and suspension take heavy wire wheel and grinder to take out the rust and old undercoating. Weld in patch panel on pass side rust hole. Shave them smooth, than coat the entire new welded panel in POR15, and also coat the wheel wells with the sealant. Than undercoat the wheel wells and paint the engine bay strut tower.