Upon examination under the car I discovered something thats got me alarmed, something i'd never noticed until now. There are a couple of deep rust spots on the floor panels both driver and passenger (passenger is the worst), just under where the back seat passengers foot would rest. Fortunatley it's not in the area where the seats are bolted in but it concerns me nontheless. The passenger side as I said has it the worst I could take a center punch and poke a hole right through the brittle metal it's not widespread thank God but I still have to repair it. The drivers side has a small hole (bout half the size of a dime - not much rust there), As i said this is the floor panels under the back passenger footrest area the frame rails don't have much rust on them (just a little surface rust but thats normal, it's mostly dirt). Since the car sat in a field for over a year it's safe to say the moisture and dirt took it's toll on the undercarriage. Now for the reason I made this post, how do I fix this? or can I? I've seen rust repair kits out there but how well do they work? I'd hate to think I went through all this trouble for a car I can't even drive i'd hate to scrap it but if it's unsafe what can I do if it came down to that i'd buy another Mav or Comet (with no engine or tranny and transfer everything over) but I hope it don't come to that. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
The only way to really take care of the rust problem on the floors is to have the badly rusted areas cut out and new sheet metal welded in it's place. Once the metal is rotted badly enough to stick your finger through it, it's pretty much shot.
It's not shot, don't worry about trashing the poor Mav. These spots should be cut out and have new pieces of metal welded in. Since repoduction floor pans are not avaliable, either get the floor pans out of a rust free junkyard Mav, or if you don't need the factory look, regular sheetmetal patch panels will work. I wonder how long it will be until Maverick reproduction floorpans will be produced? They will be eventually, and they will help a lot of people. -Corbin
