My car has tons of rust bubbles all over the back rear wheel lip of the car. How much do you think it'd cost to repair both sides? It's very noticeable since I have the sunlight silver model RX8.

- iSki

 

Might be a good idea to post some pics of the problem areas,so any body shop guys here could help give you a better info on costing

 

I also have rust in the rear fender. There was a Mazda document that suggested the proper way to repair this. I don't have access to it at the moment.

Edit: I think I found it. See attachment.

 

I bet your rust isn't this bad though:



This is a close up... Looks nasty. Poor 8. :c

 

Much worse. The fender lip is curling and could be broken off with your fingers.

 

Mine's that way too. A chunk of the lip actually busted off on the drivers side but mine's an '04 so its not even worth getting fixed. This is the first car I've ever had a rust problem with.

 

Mine is an 04 also, but I'll get it fixed. It's only a 2 season car now that I got the Cherokee.
My rust is mainly on the passenger side.

 

It's a paid to fix I hear, some body shop quoted me $8,000.00 for both rear lips and the brake light. >.<

DART IT!

 

Considering your shops are more expensive in everything than here, I would say about $1,000. Come on, for $8,000 you can buy a whole car... they're out of their mind.

 

$1,000 for one side? Or both sides?

Sounds like a steal to me..

 

$1,000 for both sides. But that's just my opinion, considering I live far far away. What I see from the pictures is easily dealt with if rust isn't too deep. Anyway, they only need to prepare half of the fender for painting after clearing the rust, and a skilled painter could probably paint it without painting the whole side of fender. By that I mean, if he is good at applying paint to create a transition with the old paint, the repairs won't be even noticeable.

Again, someone from USA should be able to give a better estimate of the cost, since here where I live, repairing that and re-spraying the whole car would cost $1,500-$1,800

 

Are you guys actually looking at the TSB someone posted right above? Seems to me it gives detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to repair this very thing.

 

hm that's weird, my rust is going on my front fenders

 

It makes me very PO'D that nobody took care of it before the issue. Lot's of car washes can prevent this... I got another quote for $6,000 which is $2,000 off. But it's still a hell load of expense. With that money, I can put a nice down payment on a Stang. >.<

 

If you operate your vehicle in a snowy environment where salt is used to de-ice roads, then rust is going to happen, period end of story. I lived in upstate New York for four years. I purchased a new at the time 90 T-bird. I had rust proofing put on it, and the first winter I drove it and took it to the car wash meticulously every day after work if the roads had been salted. I took great care to wash underneath the car which was my primary concern. After winter was over I put it on a lift just to see, and sure enoug there were some small pockets of rust developing on areas of the car, most notably on bolts, the transmission and some suspension parts. No doubt it would have been much worse had I not washed it, but inevitably there are places that can't be reached while the car is on the ground. Not to mention it's no fun washing your car when its below freezing. Solution put the car up for the winter and buy a POS to drive during winter. Point....drive car in salt, you get rusty car, make, model is of no importance! Living on a coastal area does not help either.

 

Well, I mean. This discussion is based on fixing rust. There's no way to prevent it once it happens. So basically, I wanted to see if any daring member here ever had rust related repairs done to their vehicle.

 

Or, if you know you're buying a used vehicle, like you did, you spend the extra time buying a car that doesn't already have rust on it.

I can buy RX-8's here in Colorado that don't have a speck of rust on them, all day long. And I can get even more by searching the surrounding states, that also don't have harsh climates, and produce rust free cars after many years of ownership.

The other thing is the way you get screwed anytime you talk to someone about financial transactions. I'm curious, do you walk around every day looking like this:



And did you ever switch insurance companies?

BC.

 

That $8k quote has to be a quote to replace both quarters and wheel houses, and even then it's still way too high. A good body shop should be able to repair just the rusted area and repaint the quarters for about $1500-$2000. Maybe even less depending on how bad it really is.

 

alnielsen, were you successful in getting yours repaired by Mazda?