How bad is this sill and arch rust?

Buying a ‘5 and Insurance advice Buying Advice
2

I’m on the verge of buying a 1998 Mk2 1.8 S that’s covered 50K and comes with a hard top. It has a full years MOT and the owner says the sills were done about 3 years ago as well as the aluminium wheels refurbed. The car has been owned for 16 years by the family of a friend and they’ve always had it regularly serviced plus the cambelt was changed within the last 10K.

For a 19 year old car it looks in generally good condition. I wouldn’t say mint, but nowhere near tatty. However the soft top does have a couple of 1 inch tears on the drivers side just above and behind the side window. They tell me they’ve been there for a while, but obviously at some point the roof will need replacing. So in it’s current condition they are asking £1500 for it.

But being aware of the front chassis rail issue, today I had it into my local MOT station where the tester looked all around the front chassis rails. Because he was looking at it between booked MOT’s (for free) he didn’t have time to take the engine tray off.

Nonetheless he had it up on the ramp and was looking through the gaps around the engine tray using a torch to examine the rails above. He also looked up through the front wheel arches on either side and tapped them with his hammer. Overall he seemed quite happy that the chassis rails were solid, but he did point out some rust spots on the rear passnger sill and drivers wheel arch. I know these areas notoriously corrode on the MX5, but as a newbie I have no idea how bad the issue currently is on this car. 

So I took some video of the corroded areas and I’d welcome any thoughts/advice folks can offer?

https://vimeo.com/215087579/b57c465d2a

https://vimeo.com/215087763/826a58ad7b

I don’t really want to walk away from this car since I’m certain the mileage is accurate and I trust the family have looked after it and been honest about the car’s history.

3

Sorry your video are of limited use. We need to see the side of the car to look at the complete wheel arch and then we want to look at the complete wheel arch where it turns in at right angles and curves with the tyres.

We then need to look at both rear sills from the top and underneath from the back into about half way along the door.

You also need to get a magnet and go over all these areas both sides with it to make sure it sticks to the bodywork and does not fall off due to lots of filler.

To be honest if the sills were done three years ago and the inners sill were not repaired as well and the repairer did not get cavity wax in there and it is a hard job to do a complete job it’s time for them to go again.

4

I’m no expert so I’d definitely try and get the additional views Drumtochty asked for however I can talk about the car you’re interested in, in relation to my mk1 and its’ rust issues.

Your wheel arch video shows a fair amount of bubbling (tricky to see with the shiny paint work but I did see the bulge eventually) spreading out in a balloon across the side of the car. From my own experience on my own car if you dig that away you’ll likely create quite a nice hole through the side of the car and find that while some of the very thin top layer of metal is still intact layers under it will most likely be crumbling rust that would need to be dug away at - which in turn will increase the hole somewhat as to get at them you’ll need to remove some of the top layers good metal.

The sills video appears to be showing the end of the sill where it meets the wheel arch. On my own car that was so rotten I actually removed most of it by hand, the reason being the previous owner hadn’t kept the sill drain holes clear so all the silt had been collecting there and rotting out the sills at the arches (which coincidentally had been done 3 years ago). This corrosion looked like your video does before I started digging at it.

It took a hard bristled brush and even my fingernails to break up the old, dried dirt from inside the sills, and for the wheel arches jenolite, a lot of good zinc primer and then zinc undercoat and finally mx5 paint for the look of it. Three or more months later (was SORNed btw) no sign of any new rust, that was when the filler came out to make the jagged edges safe for the MOT.

Now even though I had all the rust, the holes I dug out were not that big really (more vertical than horizontal) and not in a prescribed place, nor was the filler overly neat, any MOT tester would know at a glance there was filler there (I too wanted a reminder that in the future they need properly doing) and it passed the MOT. I used up a ton of rubber gloves rubbing my hand over the filled areas to make sure they had no jagged edges and sanding them if they did.

After all that it’s down to mentioning money, I paid £1050 for a mk1 special edition with 6 months MOT, funds were (and are even worse now) very limited hence the use of filler, but I knew it would probably be “okay” for a few MOTs like that (I too asked on the forums but at the time as I recall had no chance to upload photos) as there seemed to still be strong metal, while I (hopefully) save up the money to get the sills/arches repaired.

So after all that, do you feel the mk2 is worth £1500 for the faults you know it has (though 12 months MOT is of course a good thing as it lets you save to get the work done if required, as too of course the chassis rails condition), and do you have the extra money to get any work done now (someone can correct me but I think it’s usually £300 per sill and again per wheel arch) or like me (who in truth hadn’t quite realised the extent of the rust before I got screwdriver digging) can live with a temporary repair job and save up to get it done, or of course not pick at it and make it worse. There was no way mine would have passed an MOT after revealing all the sharp edges.

In other words how deeply in love with this car have you gone and fallen 

5

I wouldn’t pay anywhere near £1500 for that, it looks like the sill has been badly repaired before and the insides are probably a lot worse. If the arches are shot then this is almost certainly the case.

There are hundreds of these cars for sale at this time of year as the garage queens come out, keep looking for one that doesn’t have any rust (they do exist!).

6

It seems to be a fair price. I would pay that for a low mileage 1.8iS with a  hardtop. You know its history. Budget for some body repairs but you should get 3 years good use from it at least and have some fun.

Any car of that age will need more repairs than a newer car but spares are reasonable and easy to fit. Have a good look at the brake discs and pads and the exhaust. It can be very rewarding doing the work oneself on.these cars both financially and emotionally. 

7

Thanks for you feedback. I think I will go ahead with the purchase… but eyes wide open. At £1500 it’s not going to break the bank (yet) and even if the rust quickly takes it’s toll to the point of writing it off, I’m guessing selling the hard top, wheels and engine would get me a fair chunk of my investment back.

Also I just can’t afford the time and expense trekking across the country trying to find that elusive mint one. Over the years I’ve done that a few times with cars and bikes and it can be tiring, expensive and frustrating. I’m getting too old and impatient;-)

If I really fall in love with these 5’s I’ll join the Club and wait for a club member to sell a good one.

Who knows maybe the one I’m buying may not be so hard to sort out.

In fact I’ve booked it in to Freelance Mazda Chatham for a full service shortly after I pick it up, so I’ll ask their opinion over the rust and whether it’s worth tackling.

8

There are plenty of far better MX-5s out there for not much more money. By the time you’ve shelled out for the service and sorted the rust you could easily have bought an MX-5 that’s far nicer than that one will ever be.

9

There may be, but how do I find them? I’ve looked at newer cars than this one with higher mileage limited history, no hard top and signs of corrosion in the same places. I keep hearing the matra ‘there are plenty of good-uns out there’… but where?

10

 

The candid answer to that is, patience + look more towards known “club” cars with a deal of provenance.

There are good ones out there, though not plentiful any longer.

Not wishing to “diss” your proposed purchase in any way, the stark fact is it’s a money pit in waiting, and subtract the bits you have already mentioned, the first being the HT ( call it £300 +)…and what you really have is an £800.00 to £900.00 example.

Ask anyone here, and they will tell you I’m well versed in MX5 “Tip of the Iceberg” rot.

From my personal experiences, time, and expense with two 5’s I’ve owned concurrently for 11 years…if you were a member of my family I’d be saying “please don’t do it”.

I must respect your views though so press on regardless if you feel determined. 

11

Looks ok, but new hood and sorting the rust will add about £1000. Is it worth £2500 to you? Doesn’t sound too bad to me, but it’s not a bargain. If you find other issues it could get expensive.

12

Thanks for the continued feedback. Having spent a few weeks trawling through historic posts on MX5 issues here and the other forum, yes Scottishfiver your fame and determination are well known to me.

I accept your advice over patience, but in all honesty I may not have that option at this point. Mainly because I’ve already said yes to the deal and pulling out would inevitably impact the relationship with my friend and his family. 

But I also have hopes things aren’t as bad as the scenarious you’ve been through. First up my MOT friend seems to think the chassis rails are sound. I highlighted this is a major issue to him, so he honed in on them and didn’t find anything of concern.

Re the sills, well the selling family told me they spent £900 on having them done about 3-4 years ago. When the issue first cropped up, about 8 years ago, they had a temporary budget fix carried out to get it through subsequent MOT’s. Then 3-4 years ago they had the more professional fix. Whilst I accept there is obviously a sill issue on the passenger side, I’m assuming it’s not quite as bad as it could be, given the previous £900 spend/fix.

Incidentally the reg of the car is R377 AGC if you want to take a look at the MOT history.

So I’m assuming that to keep this longer than a year I’m looking at a £200-300 repair (each) for the sill and rear arch. Regarding the 2 (quite close together) one inch holes in the roof, I’m not too concerned about them (yet).

Given their specific location, ie drivers side above/behind side window, I found a thread on a Miata site where a chap had the same issue (even with a new roof) and discovered it was a known issue where the frame on the mk2 can nip the roof if you’re not careful. I’m no expert on vinyl roofs, but the rest of the roof seems good to me, so I’ll attempt a Stormsure adhesive repair in the short term and use the hard top in the winter. Nonetheless I may be looking at a new roof in a year or 2 should I keep it.

So those seem like the biggest issues with this particular car. Now on the plus side if I do decide to spend the extra £600-1000, I should have a low milage mk2 with no rust issues, a hard top and a few nice extras given the S spec. This include aluminium (professionally refurbished) wheels, partial body kit (front air dam, fog lights, rear spolier) and… if I’ve interpreted the spec sheet correctly…a LSD.

So pragmatically my choices are; pull out, upset a friend and wait for a solid club car to come along or take the risk and enjoy at least a summer of fun.

Incidentally I did spend time scouring Autotrader, Gumtree and eBay for so-called good-uns, but I was either looking at £4-5K for a mint low milage mk1 or discovering (via MOT history) that the ‘good condition’ Mk2-2.5’s had a lot of nasty advisables mostly relating to rust.

So right now I’m feeling more inclined towards ‘the devil you know’…but I accept I may live to regret it!

13

If you have already agreed to buy it you can’t really back out now. My first MX5 was a Mk2 with rusty arches and sills that were starting to go, with hard top and a hood in exactly the condition you describe. I didn’t spend any money on it except some new brakes, I enjoyed it for the spring/summer of 2010, then sold it in the autumn for what I paid for it and bought a non-rusty one. If yours has a full year MOT I wouldn’t bother doing anything with the sills and arches, just enjoy it and get rid well before the next one.

14

Thanks LilWashu, that thought has crossed my mind. I’ll get the service done (which I thought was reasonable at £110) and at the same time ask their opinion on the rust/car in general. After that I’ll decide if it’s for this summer only.

Totally unconnected but I did a similar thing with buying a cheap waterbed on eBay once. I loved it but the wife hated it, so back on eBay it went a few months later. The moral of the story… I’ve ticked the ‘must try a waterbed’ box.

15

When folks on here say find a ‘non-rusty’ one does that mean a 5 that has never rusted at all, I assume rare in the mk1-2.5, or one that has been properly repaired and undersealed?

16

When I say non rusty I mean one that isn’t rusty and hasn’t been repaired that I can see. Underseal is mostly used by sellers of MX-5s to hide horrors in my experience, and underseal won’t help with sill rust anyway.

17

Fair enough. But I have to be honest and say if I found one like that I’d be very tempted to underseal it and have the cavities done (which some specialists seem to do).

I’ve read the arguments for/against this but based on my experience in my youth with bikes wax-oiled to get through harsh winters, I do think it makes a difference, quite a big one.

I get the ‘inside out’ argument, but I suspect undeseal significantly cuts down what gets inside and also whats happening from the outside in.

18

 

I know! That aspect not lost upon me either.

A gentleman’s handshake is a rare an valued thing these days.

 

19

Yep, whilst it could turn out to my detriment, I’m old school in that respect:-)