Let’s talk about rust! Classic vehicles can’t really escape it. It’s everywhere. We expect to find it and one of the things I actually find really satisfying about my job, is knowing how much stronger I am able to make a vehicle after I’ve worked on it. I mean seriously, it gets dangerous when you’re talking about structural areas that are supposed to save your life. Some people get rather excited about having a historic vehicle and being tax exempt. Well, I personally always recommend that even if you own a tax exempt vehicle, always get an MOT anyway. It’s better to be safe than sorry for your sake and others on the road.
The photographs below show some examples of my findings. On two occasions recently I found some wire mesh and filler that had been used to cover structural areas that were incredibly rusty. It’s shocking really as there is no strength in this making it all very unsafe. You’d never know it was there because the paint covers it up. There is an image below of a newspaper dated 2011, and guess where I found that? It was inside the crash zone in the front of a camper van. Not really a great find for something that should be firm and made of metal, designed to help protect you in an accident. This is extremely poor previous repair work that someone has done along the way. We can’t know this until we get to it, but the good news is we can sort it out and put things right. I was actually quite impressed that the newspaper was still dry! The fragility of rust when it gets to this stage makes it paper thin and it simply crumbles when you touch it. It’s great tackling this. I get covered in it along the way, but it’s all part of the job.
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