Well as some may know. The sti had a little leak from around the windscreen at the top of drivers a pillar.

Turns out was caused by a ****tly fitted windscreen, no primer was used on that area, causing water to build up underneath the trim and windscreen bond.

I have cut out decent a pillars of a donor car to weld in. Currently drilling the spot welds out of the donor pillars to replace

Solid metal at bottom of windscreen:



Also pillar in general:




The rot at the top with a very quick wire wheel:





Will post updates as I go along. Hopefully ready to cut along 5 inches along top of windscreen and down in next week or so.

 

Good luck.

 

That's shocking. Good luck with getting it back on the road.

 

Cut out the replacement pillar's from the donor. way to big for what i need so will be accurately cut down ready for welding in.

the donor bit's are getting blasted and cleaned, red oxide primerd tomorrow

 

The car is a 1999 v5 , imported 2003 ish, done approx 65k mile's and been dry stored most of the time, amazing how bad is has got

 

Well some of today's work so far. Cut out all the rot, not as bad as expected to be honest, The inner 2 skin's are completely solid and rot free.

Original plan was to cut the outside of the A pillar, However gone with the otherside to help keep the original profile of the pillar.

Little bit more grinding the donor piece into shape, as currently overlap's the original Pillar. Before welding will be applying Por15 metal prep and ready on the inner A pillar, followed by zinc primer. Should protect the inside for year's to come.

 

Looking good.

 

I'd put money on that being caused by a carelessly removed screen during replacement exposing bare metal?

 

There was a about 4 inches on the top of the a pillar and across the top of the windscreen aperture that had no bind at all and no sign of primer.

Really poorly fitted and quite dangerous. Used to work for autoglass so can kindly ask a old colleague to refit a new one when I get a new windscreen

 

Wee bit more done today after finally sorting the engine to gearbox bolts and also the engine mounts

The doner piece wasn't quite enough after further investigation at the bottom so made a bit up, had to remove after this photo as penetration wasn't to great.2nd time round much better Does the job and welded in nicely



Finally finished making everything fit nicely and minimal gap for welding

 

Nice.

 

That's the a pillar mostly welded in. A couple of spots to go over as was thin and blown threw. Joys of 0.8mm steel. Still to spot weld and repair the lip section were the windscreen sits but shouldn't take long

Tidy it all up and a couple light coats of por 15

 

That's it all finished now . Just final prep for paint and all done

 

Very nice and got to admire your tenacity,great stuff.

 

Thankyou, it is a bit if a pain doing as the metal was quite thin. Happy how it's turned out. Certainly no rust from there again

Im away to put up a rather depressing post on general technical " sills "