Ok so I went and got a new filter and checked to make sure it was for the 4T65E and it was. I got the old seal out and gently hammered the new one in with a socket the size of the new seal, then gently hammered in the new filter with a rubber mallet until it was all the way in. i drove it about 30 miles and all seems well so thats another job done. I sanded, bondoed, and primed and painted a few spots on the front drivers side fender, and i did the entire rear drivers side. I still have to fix a few spots but ill do that another day. I dont think it looks good but i think it looks good enough, and it stops the rust from getting worse until i can get it properly taken care of.

I didnt strip the rear down to bare metal and you can see stuff showing through, plus theres a bunch of debris in my clearcoat, i should have stripped it to bare metal, but i didnt and thats a mistake i wont make twice if i ever re do it, but like i said, this is good enough for now. I still need to wet sand it with some fine sandpaper to get rid of the orange peeling but thats it for that. I need to do the other side still. I havent yet done the POR-15 but im thinking ill do that tomorrow. I also noticed on the drivers side rear wheel well lip, theres a spot so rusted its coming off so idk what to do about that.

Also I forgot to tape off my weather-stripping near the backseat window and got primer on it, any idea how i can get that off?

 

Hit it with some solvent on a rag real quick - acetone, xylene, lacquer thinner, etc.

It is detrimental to the weather stripping, so don't soak it and let it sit until it evaporates. Id just get a corner of a rag wet- wipe it to moisten all of the paint spots, then quickly come back and aggressively scrub them with the damp rag. Once its gone, immediately hit it with a dry rag to get most of the liquid off (any solvent residue should flash off almost immediately once you wiped it with a dry rag).

Id also be careful not to soak the rag so much that it drips down onto the body paint - you don't want it dripping wet, just damp.

 

I just got caught up. Glad Jeff's advice about that trans filter seal worked. That's the same advice I would have given (worked for me every time). Looks like you are moving along pretty good! Also looks like this is not the first time that car has seen some bondo.

 

Thanks for the tip about how to remove the paint from the weatherstripping. Which leads me to a question, can that weatherstripping be replaced? As in, brand new and not some pulled from the junkyard?

As for the transmission seal thing, yeah I was a little worried about it and I slightly nicked the inner race, but the filter seal covers up the nick so I think it will be ok. I hope...

And yeah my dad did a lot of Bondo work fixing dents in it a long time ago. He let his gf drive it and she put a dent in the rear driver's side so he had to drill the steel and pull the dents out. Which is why it looked the way it did before I painted it.

I plan to do the rest of the external rust repair one of these days but it was cold and rained a little today so I just went sanded the orange peel on the paint job I did on the rear driver's side, then I compounded and polished it and it looks soooo much better, almost factory. Why I didn't do the other part up to the driver's side door I couldnt tell you but I will do that along with the rust repair when it's good out so I can blend that in.

Speaking of rust repair. I noticed around the lips of the inner wheel wells, those pieces of metal are so rusted they are just falling off. Any idea how to fix that?






I was thinking I could use some wire self adhesive mesh and that Bondo glass I bought but idk. I'm not sure if the mesh will be long enough to do the whole thing and I'm not sure what else I can do for it.





Onto some slightly better news I finally got the bowtie mounted 😁😁

 

So a little update. I fixed all the rust spots but i fear that there is rust behind the panels and i am lookign around for a place to fix these issue. I will keep the bondo spots for now until i can get a shop to fix them. I just used some rust converter on the spot under the drivers side ground fx for now. I tried to jack the car up on the pinch welds like suggested and as i feared, they were so rusted they just crumbled and bent the steel underneath so not being able to jack the car up i did not get to the POR-15 this week unfortunately. I tried to place the car on the jack stands on the rails underneath and they started to bend so i dropped the car onto its wheels. I did however get all my brake lines done by Belle tire, also got a new CV axle and my calipers rebuilt. I'm afraid to do more damage to the car so I will not mess with it any fiurther until i can figure something else out.

 

Helluva damn rebuild and I admire you for it.... I personally would've given up a long time ago and I love my 2003 to death!!!!!!
I also would have been right beside you, lending a hand, if you were local to me or at least closer. Keep up the good work my dude.

 

Agree with Mac7504, you are to be commended for your "tough" extra efforts being expended with the restoration, lots of love going on there. Sucks about the pinch welds giving way, I was hoping they still had some integrity, but then you called it early out thinking they may be compromised by the rust issues, dang that sucks. Perhaps get 2 more of the ramps and get your car elevated that way. I have done that in the past, had to jack up the rear and then place the ramps under the tires. Keep on keeping on brother. Wow, calipers rebuilt and new brake lines have to be a huge relief with regards to the safety aspect, knowing you can shut it down from 80mph in a hurry standing on the pedal and not having a line, fitment give way under duress.

 

You'd have to figure out the PN and look it up (or go to a dealer and ask them to pull it). The problem is some of the stuff like that is starting to run out of stock as they deplete their inventory. Itll vary from part to part - so maybe you get lucky on that one?



The right way is to cut all of that out and replace with fresh metal.

In the short term, bondo will certainly work - but I'd spend as much effort as you can on stopping the spread rather than focusing on making it look pretty. If you intend to keep it long term, this is just going to keep eating away at the body (while you're visually fooled that its solved since the outer repair will look nice for awhile). Even if you had to drill a hole or two to be able to spray converter / sealer inside, it would be well worth it to ensure the whole fender isn't gone from the inside out by the time you get around to fixing it for real.

I don't think I'd bother with that mesh - I think you're going to have a hard time getting a surface flat enough and clean enough to adhere to. Your surface is going to be a bumpy mess, theres no good way to bend that mesh to adhere all over. Assuming whats left is pretty sound, the bondo hair alone will fill it and hold. If theres not much left after you clean it up though, I'd be concerned that any bondo won't last. That area gets pelted with rocks / snow / debris - etc and bondo doesn't absorb flex like sheet metal does. Id be worried about it cracking a lot with use.

One other potential option- what about getting a piece of mild steel sheet metal about the width of that protrusion (or cutting a bit wider sheet to that width with tin snips). You could then grind all the rust off, bend this to shape by hand, and epoxy it to the existing metal (using clamps or screws to hold it in place until the epoxy cures). Then you could take bondo and blend the edge into the side of the body (so you don't have a lip). That would cut down a lot of bondo use and would put it primarily out of the wheel well area where its at the highest risk.



As for your concern getting the car off the ground - why not put jack stands under the engine cradle up front, and then blocks/ ramps under the rear wheels?

 

Your problem with the pinch welds is NOT uncommon. Personally, even when those points are good, I hate using them. IMO, best spots for jack and jack stands are on the aluminum subframe in the front or the rear suspension cradle in the back (I think advice I gave earlier in this thread). If those points cannot hold it, you have bigger problems. I have used other spots, but not often and not as easy to explain.

If it makes you feel any better, on my first car (1984 Buick Century), I accidentally put the jack under the floor pan. I had a big bump I had to pound flat inside the car as a result. OOPS! Live and learn.

 

Wow lots of new responses! thanks for the support guys! it means a lot. Yeah the ol girl still has a lot of life left in her so i wont give up just yet. A car will pretty much last forever if taken care of properly and the ambition is there.

So what i did was I removed the rust from the rear right wheel well, the steel was rotted through and i took a huge chunk of it out, i didnt have any tin snips so i just used some pliers to rip out the steel. I used the steel mesh and the bondo glass, then the regular bondo gold, sanded, primed and painted it. I did that simply to keep that area protected until i can properly fix it by welding new steel in. My uncle said he was looking for a welder plasma cutter combo, and If i could find one with good reviews he would buy it and let me borrow it so that would help a ton and save me loads of money. So I was thinking of buying this thing:
use that to cut out a big chunk of steel, bigger than i would need just to make sure i get all the rust, then place that cut out on top of the new steel sheet, outline it with a paint pen and cut out the fresh steel, that step would save me a few hours of slowly grinding to try to fit it back in that spot. then weld it in grind down the welds smooth, prime it and paint it. Im not too worried about the front quarter panels, those can easily be replaced, and will most likely be anyways, but the back side parts of the body as far as i know cannot be so thats what im most concerned about. But yeah, at least having my brake lines and calipers re done does indeed make me feel sooo much better, i was worried about those for the longest time, glad its all done now.

abbout the pinch welds, is it possible to weld in better jack points? I was thinking of welding in a big thick piece of steel at each corner where the cut out in the plastic ground fx is, maybe i would have to put some more steel in internally but maybe a thick piece of steel with an indent to keep a jack from slipping would be better than the stock pinch welds. Yeah the aluminum subframe at the front is what i was thinking too. I did jack the car up on the rear subframe and that held just fine but my jack is too low profile so even jacked up all the way the car didnt even get off the ground haha, it just raised it off the suspension a little.

As for the weather-stripping im wondering if i cant just find some universal stripping and just use that, im not too concerned with keeping things factory, at least not things i cant easily get, if this weather-stripping isn't made anymore then im going to have to find a new solution.

Here's a screenshot of the repair i did with the mesh and bondo glass




Heres a picture outlining how much rusted steel i removed. Its not painted on the back so the moisture will probably get to the bondo at some point. But i couldnt get the damn wheel well cover off because i couldnt get the tire off, because i couldnt jack the car up to do so haha, if i could have i would have done that. Sanding that bondo glass down was a pain in the ***, but i built it too high so thats my fault, lesson learned there haha.




Like i said, thats just a stop gap for right now until i can get my hands on a welder. learning to weld will be a useful skill so this will be a good test. With all that being said what kind of steel do i get? what guage/thickness?