rust rears its ugly head...when does it become a lost cause? (long)

[vwscir88@hotmail.com (brett cooke)]

that sucks! i hate rust. everything does look fixable though. i guess the 
real dilemma is do you really want to put that kinda time and money into the 
car? i think only you can really answer that, but i know if it were me 
personally i'd consider giving it a go. i like to get in over my head :D i 
hope whichever way you choose to go works out well for you.
  hit



So Sayeth The Hitman
'88 "stripe" 16v scirocco
<http://www.techography.net:82/brettsgarage>





>From: Jeff Toomasson <jtoomasson@yahoo.com>
>To: scirocco-l@scirocco.org
>Subject: rust rears its ugly head...when does it become a lost cause? 
>(long)
>Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 17:12:49 -0800 (PST)
>
>
>I had suspected that there may be some deeper rust issues because I found 
>that the strut towers showed some beginning signs of separation.
>
>Well, I finally got around to getting under the carpet and under the noise 
>padding and found more crud. Photos can be seen at:
>
>http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/jtoomasson/lst?.dir=/My+Photos&.view=t
>
>The only two points where there are actual holes is near front of the 
>passenger side floor pan and towards the front of the rear passenger side 
>pan. Both holes are no bigger than a dime and the surrounding metal feels 
>intact for the most part.
>
>But I started doing some more digging. I stripped off a little of the bondo 
>near the fender flares to see how easy it would be remove in case I had to 
>remove the fender to fix the shock tower situation. That's when I found the 
>PO had gone nuts with the rivets...
>
>When I start adding all this up, I get nervous. I do not have problem 
>welding two, three, four, five patches in to fix all this stuff, I do not 
>have a problem grinding out all the rust from the pan, I do not have a 
>problem welding the shock towers if I could be assured they'd come out good 
>as new or better...but patching 50+ rivets holes with  no guarantee there 
>isn't already rust behind them??  I want to have mk1 that's going to be 
>CLEAN - I don't want to spend 5000 hours and $5000 only to have it fall 
>apart in a couple of years...
>
>At what point do I call the coroner? Did I make a poor choice? I mean, I 
>got the thing for $200 primarily because it had an original ragtop which I 
>could remove if it came down to it. I could easily get that money back from 
>parts...I keep hearing that Cali rocs have little-to-no rust. Should I 
>start again?
>
>Thanks for letting me rant.  Jeff
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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