Re: heartbreak

["Paul Irvine" <pi@xxxxxxx>]

Sebastian Toomey wrote:

>I recently aquired my first alfa, a beautiful (looking) GTV6, about a
>month ago.....

>I began to jack up the front drivers side, my jack carefully placed under
the >jack point behind the front wheel. As I began to raise the car, I heard
a
>funny sound and looked under to notice the jack point slowly pressing
>itself up into my floor pan. Closer inspection revealed that the jack
>point, and in fact the floor pan, was tearing away from the rocker panel
>(sill?)....

>I pulled up the drivers side carpet to get a better idea of what was
>going on. In the outer left corner I saw a gaping hole going clear
>through the sill right where it attaches to the the body behind the
>wheel well, remnents of old fiberglass still clinging to the rusty
>fragments!

> My questions to you all are:

>1. Should I be preparing myself to dump this car??? Is this cancerous
>rust fatal? Mechanically the car is great, and the thought of never
>hearing her beautiful v6 roar again brings tears to my eyes. I bought
>the car for 2k so I feel I can afford to put a little money into it.

>3. Have any of you had this kind of problem repaired and how much did it
>cost you?

Sebastian - you're going to have to take a closer look at some other
sections of the car to determine just how bad your rust problem is. If it is
confined to just the floorpans (it's possible) then it can be fixed without
too much trouble. If it's more extensive than that then you have to really
weigh it all in. I mean, just about anything can ultimately be repaired but
there is a point beyond which it's probably not worth it.

I haven't done floorpans in a GTV6 but I did do my Spider and having pulled
the seats out of my GTV6 I can say that they are similar in construction.
It's quite a job though and I can imagine how you feel having only had your
car for a month. It cost me about $600 to do it myself on the Spider. I'd
imagine it would cost at least twice that to have a body shop do the job.

The other option, if the rust only affects the floorpans, is to just keep
driving the car as it is. Cosmetically your the only one that's ever going
to know but I don't know what you'd do if you ever got a flat up front since
it sounds as though your jackpoints are useless.

I had a beautiful '72 Fiat Spider many years ago that had some horrible rust
problems in the front end that were near to impossible to repair. I managed
to keep it going for several years but it did eventually begin to fall
apart.

I know how you feel - good luck.

PS - check out my webpage at :

http://www.crl.com/~pi/project/restore/floorpan/floor1.htm

It details the floorpan replacement I did on my Spider, it'll give you an
idea of what it entails anyway.

Paul Irvine  - Antioch CA
72 Spider - 79 Sprint Veloce - 82 GTV6
- ---------------------------------------------
Project Alfa - http://www.crl.com/~pi/project
E-Mail - mailto:pi@domain.elided

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