I finally had the sketchy frame repairs that were done 33 years ago properly repaired. These battleships tend to hold water in the rear frame rail kick-out area (same spot as mid-year Corvettes). When the car was repainted back in 1992, the body guy used a stick welder and some metal brackets to make slap on patches which her then welded to each other like fish scales. Worked for three decades.
We have a local shop (50 miles away actually) that does absolutely amazing frame repairs. Their main job is WoolWax undercoating but they have a side business that started when someone posted their work on a Toyota FJ Land Cruiser page. Now they have FJ's from all over the country on a waiting list for the frame repairs. Garden State Undercoating:
https://www.facebook.com/search/top?...20undercoating
Contact info: Chris at Garden State Undercoating, 126 Route 46 , Saddle Brook, New Jersey (973) 343-9775,
[email protected]
Here's the product page for the woolwax itself. You can buy it from them in bulk.
https://www.woolwaxusa.com/
They main welder is a retired Ukrainian tank mechanic. Watching this guy work is mesmerizing. It's like a balloon animal artist at a kid's birthday party. He cuts out the bad area, just looks at the missing space and then miraculously hammers out exact duplicate patches. He's like a human CNC machine.
They repaired/welded/primed and painted both frame rails and one hole in the driver's side wheel well by the rocker panel, in a couple days and then wool-waxed the entire underside after wire brushing and sanding the entire frame.
I'm glad I finally did it because it turned out that the only portion of those areas remaining were the fish scale repair patches. The underlying rusty frame spots had totally dissolved to dust.
Here's the driver's side which was much worse than the passenger side.