98_Martin
Member
- Messages
- 46
- Location
- Inverness, UK
This summer I tore into my 2005 Jaguar X-Type Estate sills. I've owned the car for a little less than a year and with the MOT around the corner and some previous patches on the rear outer panels looking like they might be hiding something worse than surface rust I certainly didn't look forward to what I might find. It's no surprise to anyone in the know that Jaguar's from the early 2000's like to rust in the sill areas, most notably X-Types and S-Types mainly down to poor drainage and lack of protection from the factory. My estate is no exception and although being a south of England car with low millage (~68k) I found that behind the plastic sill covers there was indeed a repair needing done. I started with repairing the drivers side as it looked like the side that seems to have suffered worse and plan to do the passenger side next year as a lack of time and other work needing done (suspension) means that it will have to wait.
At first look it would be tempting to just give it a wire wheel and throw some underseal on it but some very apparent deformation in the rear jacking area suggesting internal weakening and the old statement that rust starts from the inside meant that I was going to cut it open and see how bad things were.
The lower pinch weld was especially bulged in the areas around the drain points with the rears being almost indistinguishable whereas the very front section which is void of any drains hasn't suffered as badly. Perhaps this could be down to the design of the drains not sufficiently allowing water to escape or the car lived a lot of its life parked nose up.
The vertical inner sill panel was almost totally rotten at its lower edge from I imagine water pooling inside the structure so I cut it up to clean metal along the entire sill and kept some of better examples as patterns to fabricate my repair to. The horizontal floor to sill section was also cut back to about 10mm from the interior structure to remove all metal with visible pitting after attacking it with the wire wheel. After all this I have to admit that standing back and seeing a area very lacking in metal did make me feel nervous and that perhaps I should have just slapped that underseal on.....
At first look it would be tempting to just give it a wire wheel and throw some underseal on it but some very apparent deformation in the rear jacking area suggesting internal weakening and the old statement that rust starts from the inside meant that I was going to cut it open and see how bad things were.
The lower pinch weld was especially bulged in the areas around the drain points with the rears being almost indistinguishable whereas the very front section which is void of any drains hasn't suffered as badly. Perhaps this could be down to the design of the drains not sufficiently allowing water to escape or the car lived a lot of its life parked nose up.
The vertical inner sill panel was almost totally rotten at its lower edge from I imagine water pooling inside the structure so I cut it up to clean metal along the entire sill and kept some of better examples as patterns to fabricate my repair to. The horizontal floor to sill section was also cut back to about 10mm from the interior structure to remove all metal with visible pitting after attacking it with the wire wheel. After all this I have to admit that standing back and seeing a area very lacking in metal did make me feel nervous and that perhaps I should have just slapped that underseal on.....
Last edited: