I have an '89 Se-i. I guess I'm average-lucky with the rust, as it isn't too bad, and confined mostly to the driver's side rear wheel well. It had just barely started to bubble in the usual place (rear of arch) last year, just a spot about half an inch long and maybe 1/4 inch high. "I'll get to it eventually," I said to myself. A more pressing issue was the clogging of the rear sunroof drains, which resulted in a dump of what seemed like a small bucket of water down my neck one rainy day. When I removed the left interior trunk panel to get at the sunroof drain, Holy Rustolee! there was a nice long 5" gash/rustout in the fender. It wasn't visible from the outside, because it was covered by the plastic fender liner inside the wheel well, and by the trunk liner inside the trunk. Ferrous Oxide having its devious way with that hidden sheet metal. What followed was the removal of the wheel, the fender liner, and the move-outta-the-way of the rear bumper cover, and a typical patch/fix rust repair job.
That done, I took a look at the little bubbling under the paint. "In for a dime, in for a dollar," I said, and started digging. Yecchh. Before I was done, about 2 1/2" x 1" of exterior sheet metal was gone. But there was other stuff in there, kind of a putty-like material that was between the exterior sheet metal and the inner sheet metal, a putty sandwich if you will. The putty stuff didn't seem to be impermeable, and I had the sinking feeling that the combination of the hidden damage and perhaps other invasions had resulted in moisture kind of soaking up in that putty, so that even if I rooted out all the rust in my little hole, it would eventually rust again, or at least the moisture would leech out through the body filler that I would use to plug up the dig. Well, it's now been 7 months, and sure enough....it's baaaaaacccckkkkkk!
So here's my questions. First, what is that filler stuff between the inner and outer fender walls? And second, has anyone done a "proper" rust repair job with new metal, the old stuff cut away at least an inch around the rust, and had it come back? That would be depressing...weld in a new section, pay for the paint (especially pay for the paint), only to find that up higher in the fender walls lay a batch of moisture, just waiting to migrate down and through the new work.
Lastly, it's hard to understand the reluctance of Mother Honda to address this issue for so many years. I saw a Series 5 car with rusty wheel arches today. That is really poor. I have an '85 Volvo, and had an '85 Audi, neither of which have had any rust. And you generally don't see it on Euro cars built after the end of the '70's or thereabouts. It's definitely the Achilles Heel of our rides.
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