Need input on strut tower rot. Help a newer fabricator out.

If the rest is clean and never wrecked, I’d patch it in

If the top and bottom is still solid, then do a patch job. No sense in all the extra work and risk if you dont HAVE to do it.

Here is mine.



Cut the rust out, sand everything down to bare metal and clean it best you can. (My K member spacers were still solid, luckily)



Spray it with rust convertor or brush on POR15.



Button it back up. Sorry, I deleted some of my progress pics off my phone.





Also, once done I sprayed the inside with a wax crap that @Davedacarpainter recommended from a couple holes located on the wheel well side. That is just more corrosion protection in case your paint job didnt reach everything.

Church401 said:

Okay guys, I have my engine out and cut away the rot on my 92 notch. I need opinions on what to do next.

Option a: re weld patch panels in and replace the dowels that the k member bolts run through. With this method I know the k member bolts will line up. All I'll have to do is fix the rail and patch it .

Option b : I have the full aprons cut out of a rust free car. I could cut the entire section out and replace it with an oem rail and section. But I risk not making my measurements correctly and misaligning the k member bolts.

I can weld fine, and have a nice setup.

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I don't know man, those dowels/spacers look kinda wasted. I would clean them up and see how much I left of em, if not, plan B may be your only option...... You would want a professional to set up your car on a frame machine and replace those. You wouldn't be risking JUST the alignment of the K member. The whole front end.

You could remove the k-member and set up a jig on the floor that bolts up with the k-member bolts, and take some measurements to fender holes, and the overall front end/height at different locations off the floor. If you go with plan b That's probably how I'd do it.

That’s another way

Wayfastxl1250 said:

You could remove the k-member and set up a jig on the floor that bolts up with the k-member bolts, and take some measurements to fender holes, and the overall front end/height at different locations off the floor. If you go with plan b That's probably how I'd do it.

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Do this. Plenty of measurements and put them on a sketched up drawing to remember them. It’s not that hard, especially since you can weld.

Blake and I have access to frame machines (we work in body shops). That would be ideal, but you can do it at home.

LMR has a frame kit that you could get as well, no shock tower though.

This is what I had to do to my car when I got it (wow guess 4 years now) of course I had to pull motor out, and ended up taking rest of car apart, since I'm in the, might as well replace everything mode, got motor rebuilt, rear, ect... so anyway, what I did is, on LMR they sell the frame rail kits, well mine was only bad in that spot where the k-member bolts go like yours, the drivers side was the worst, pass side wasn't bad at all, but I did the same repair to it anyway... so I removed everything, including the k-member... I found on another form thread, the guy who makes the frame rail kits that LMR sells (I forget now who) so I hit him up, to see if I could buy just that outer covering part (the one that the top k-member nuts sits on in the strut tower in the wheel well, and if he had any extra rail sections, so I would have the same metal thickness...ect,,, so I bought the stuff from him... those stock crush tubes are just bent sheet metal, and are not even fully connected as a cylinder... so what I got from him, was a bottom plate that fits in the frame rail, that the crush tubes sit on, the crush tubes (which were real tubes, and the out part in the wheel well that the k-member nuts sit on top of, and a couple small sections of scrape frame rail they had they was left over... I didn't end up using the crush tubes he sent, I had some pipe that was a little thicker 1/4 I think, so I cut 6 of those (3 for each side) welded them to the bottom plate. I cut open the section, and sandblasted and panted everything, then tacked that bottom plate into the bottom of the frame rail with the 3 crush tubes on it... then I painted it again... then I welded new metal to close it up, and also the new out side top cover in the wheel well... I also had to buy new k-member bolts... I found a set of stock ones on e-bay, they looked almost new... (I think the bolts from ford are over 22.00 each if you can even get them). got the k-member bolted back up. Then I got the Eastwood internal frame coating stuff. and sprayed that into the rails once i had it all button back up. I used a lot I really wanted to make sure it never rust in there again... lol.... I'll look for the pictures when I get home and post them up...

I feel this should be stronger then it was new... since all they did is spot weld everything, and those tubes were just thin sheet metal and not even a fully formed tubes...

will be putting the motor and everything else back together finally this spring, hopefully next month when the weather finally warms up...

Yeah keep us posted, the notch I had had frame rail and shock tower rust just like that, but I didn't want to deal with it, sold that damn car. Its to bad too because that car was my all time favorite. I wish I would have kept it. Sold it a few years ago, if I could do it again I would have jumped into those rails and kept it.

I also scrapped my favorite car because of rust issues in the towers....and stress cracks in the cowl. Wish i would've fixed mine too.

You live and learn.....I guess.

90sickfox said:

I also scrapped my favorite car because of rust issues in the towers....and stress cracks in the cowl. Wish i would've fixed mine too.

You live and learn.....I guess.

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Yes sir. I do enjoy my GT, But doesn’t look as cool as my notch did.