Help!!

Here's my situation. Car is rusted out from underneath. Never noticed it when buying the car and even though I had it on ramps a few times at a couple of different garages for work that needed doing, none of them spotted the rust and I carried on spending on the car thinking the body was good. So now the car is mechanically sweet but the sills are rotten for sure and in all likelihood the floor pan needs work too (though this still needs to be verified). I'm on a tight budget. Have no garage space and no hands on experience with working on cars so can't do any work myself. Spoke to a couple of body shops and they're all quoting me at least £3,000 cos everything needs removing from the bottom and the seats, etc, and welding done, etc, etc.

If I sell it, it will be for peanuts and I'll be throwing money away (I know these cars are money pits but this would be ridiculous). I can't afford to take it to a body shop. I can't break it or do a shell swap cos I don't have anywhere to work on it (would prob cost the same as repairing it anyway). In other words, I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. I'm pulling my hair out guys. What should I do??

Gtir123 said:

Speak to dangerous Dave as he has a couple of shells
first bit is making said shell water tight then fit bits when you can

and I bet it won't even cost half as much a the welding...!!

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I would LOVE to work on it myself but I don't have the space Plus with my level of experience it will take countless months to do so renting out a garage isn't too cost-effective either at London rates.

jay1 said:

where abouts in london are you?? my friend is reli good at welding and wont charge anywhere near that, but he works full time so will only be able to do it over weekends, let me know if thats any good to ya

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I'm in Walthamstow. Will be happy for your friend to have a look. What kind of experience does he have?

Makaveli_se7en said:

Talk to Warpspeed, he's up in Scotland but is our resident bodyshop owner. At least he should be able to give you agood idea of an appropriate price for the work

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Cool, will do. But London is expensive compared to other places!

Update:

Ok, so I was recommended a local garage by someone and took the car over to have it looked at, and absolutely rotten is an understatement! Just take a look at these pics of the inner sills (taken by the garage):



(Near side)





(Off side)

I left the car with the garage for a day whilst they assessed the damage (as I was at work) but without asking me, the welder started working on it!! So I made my way down there and long story short, he said he'll charge me £250 for the job. The next worrying development however is that he took just a day to "fix" it:









My understanding is it should take several days for each side (well the near side was a smaller area but the off side was all the way along). So my question is, what is the extent of the work that is likely to have been done in that time? He said he cut out the rust, cleaned it up, put on protection and then welded it up but is all that possible in just one day's work??? My guess is he just welded on new pieces on the outer sills only without doing the inner sills. Or am I wrong considering it's not possible to weld on rotten metal?

The arches were repalced by the previous owner so are ok, though the job could have been done better. It was mainly the sills that needed sorting this time around.

Yeh lol. In all honesty, if done properly it should be a 1k job at least. That's what has me worried. It's all ok just putting on new metal on the outer sill and getting it through MOT, but structuraly it could still be a hazard if the inner sills are still torn to bits, especially if the rot has reached any mounting points like it did with mine.