Had Mot, what is more important to get done first?

doubleug

Forget the thought of doing anything . I am awfully afraid that it is on it's last legs. You will get nothing if you try and sell it -indeed perspective buyers

BeenThroughItAll

AdrianC wrote: »

Spraying wax onto the external underside won't stop - or even slow - the rot. It's coming from the inside to the outside. By the time you see it, there's !!!!!! all metal left.

On the underside of the Ka I treated, the rust was external. For it to be coming from inside, it'd have had to come from under the carpets - which were dry.


The sills, wings, petrol filler surround, subframe mounts, trailing arm mounts, and strut top mounts, on the other hand, very often are, although again in the case of the one I did were not, points where rot rapidly causes the car's demise.

Joe_Horner

AdrianC wrote: »

Spraying wax onto the external underside won't stop - or even slow - the rot. It's coming from the inside to the outside. By the time you see it, there's !!!!!! all metal left.

If it's come through from the inside that close to 2 subframe mounts then there's a very good chance the subframe wouldn't be attached anymore.

Contrary to what some people seem to believe, a lot of corrosion (especially on the underside) starts from the outside.

Which is pretty obvious if you have any sort of technical understanding of what happens if you take steel and continually spray it with water, mud and salt. Under-body coatings fail and create water traps, things like suspension mounts are already often mud traps because of their shape, and so rust starts.

Waxes won't stop it once it's started but, by displacing the water and forming a film which effectively excludes oxygen (another requirement for rust to happen), it slows it down enormously.

mrmot

On the old MOT computer system there was Vehicle Specific Information (VSI) available. For the Ford Ka it detailed the maximum amount of movement that was allowed on the front struts, it was quite generous at 10mm vertical and 6mm lateral.

Joe_Horner

mrmot wrote: »

On the old MOT computer system there was Vehicle Specific Information (VSI) available. For the Ford Ka it detailed the maximum amount of movement that was allowed on the front struts, it was quite generous at 10mm vertical and 6mm lateral.

Thanks, had a feeling it was one of the ones with special notes about that but, not being a tester and never having had a Ka, it was just something I "thought I'd picked up somewhere" either on the net or chatting to testers over the years and didn't want to give bad info