R34 strut tower rust

[thumper]

An aquaintance of mine bought a 1999 GT-T from auction in Japan from a 3rd party. It has failed inspection because of rust in the top of the strut towers, and I do not mean surface rust peeking through the joins or seam sealer... apparently it's so bad you can drive a screwdriver through the rusted areas and "not hit bottom". It is clear that someone had covered it up with bondo and paint to get rid of it at auction (he does not have the auction sheet). What is odd is that the rest of the car has very little surface rust on the underside, and it does not appear to have been repainted.

The seller has long since disappeared so he's left with this mess. Has anyone had to deal with this sort of repair before, and how expensive can it get?

[caliber676]

See if you can get new towers from nissan, they still have a lot of body parts available. If not then you gotta find a junk car you can cut it out from.

[Dragon Humper]

It could also be repaired with hand formed pieces. I've seen said rust in an R34 strut tower first hand and any competant tin basher should be able to cut out the spot welds and make those pieces from scratch. Depending on how much the new parts are from Nissan, this could be much cheaper...and better if the pieces are made out of thicker material.




Jon.

[thumper]

where is this rust coming from? is it coming from the inside of the wheel well? is it something that went wrong in the factory during assembly/welding?

[Dragon Humper]

When they changed the design in the tower to go from a dogbone upper link to a true A-arm style upper link they just added the extra sheet metal for the mounts but didn't rustproof it properly. Todays coated metals with the rustproof/prmer bath and bake they do now this wouldnt be an issue. You cant have 3 layers of sheet metal on top of one another and not get some kind of rusting. Especially when it is so close to road polutants and the constant spray from driving in the large amount of rain in Japan.




Jon.

[Bruizer]

Sadly there's no warranty on 15 year old cars. Have you talked to a body shop about cutting and welding new metal?

[thumper]

he only tried one shop and they quoted him something like $2-3k, citing that they haven't worked on a skyline before and do not know what is inside once they start cutting.

as i had mentioned before, someone had covered everything up with bondo and paint on the top and undercoat from the bottom. you can stick a screwdriver through the bondo patch from the top and see it poke out in the fenderwell from below.