Holy shit…
I hate standard UK S13 spoilers. So as with many S13′s before i undid the bolts and manhandled it off the bootlid. I have done quite a lot of patch and fill jobs on S13 lids in the past but this one really took the bourbon. If you own an S13, the likelihood is that you’ll have a similar (albeit not so drastic) situation underneath your own standard spoiler. The problem is that the standard boot spoiler acts as some very convenient water trap, which over the 15-20 years of the cars live, gradually eats away at the metal – resulting in the above.
I must admit i have never seen one quite this bad.
Usually, i would have just binned the entire bootlid and purchased another one of the forums. However, this one had a tinted rear screen that matches the 1/4 windows AND i’m supposed to be helping show people how to build a solid street car. So, i guessed it would be helpful if i put the hours in to show you how to repair the problem on your own driveway.
First and foremost, if you remove your spoiler and it reveals a similar scene to the one above, bin it. It’s really not worth your time. A new, rust free bootlid can be had off the for sale sections of Driftworks or the SXOC for around £50 and it’s by far your easiest option. But if you really want to fix it, then do the below.
Firstly, you’ll need to remove the 4 bolts holding on the spoiler and the 3 bolts holding on the window motor. Then from the top of the bootlid, remove the cowl around the bottom of the wiper arm and undo the 12mm bolt and remove. The spoiler is held on with 4 poppers, 4 bolts and a load of shitty bondo/glue stuff. Forget trying to pop it all off in one piece after 15 years of rot and grime. Give it a good tug and the whole thing should pull off in a couple of bits.
That’ll leave you with this:
Firstly, you need to get rid of the rust… That means physically cutting it out of the lid – do to this, you’ll need either an angle grinder with a cutting disc or a small air saw or nibbler. Before you make any cuts, get a wire brush attachment on the end of a power drill or sand the surface back around the rusty area untill you find the point where the metal becomes “rust free” Make sure you check underneath and on top of the lid to confirm that you have got it all. Then mark up your cutting lines with a marker or scribe and chop away.
You’ll see on the right hand photo that i have gone around the edges of the right hand hole with a wire brush attachment to bring it back to bare metal. This is because im going to weld in a plate. Welding and plate in is BY FAR the best way to fix this problem if the holes are this big. The other option is to fibreglass over the hole. It’s a pretty simple process that involves “packing” the hole out to give you something to lay the glass onto (Cardboard is good for this) and then laying fibreglass repair putty and sheets of glass fibre over the top. It’s not pretty and it’s not foolproof – but it works on smaller patches (really not anything this big tho)
As we are welding in a plate, the next stage is to make a template (out of card) for the plate that we need to fill the hole with. Make your template, check it fits, lay it on top of your plate and replicate. Simples.
Bend your plate to fit and tack it into the boot lid. You need to make sure that your plate is tacked ever so slightly recessed into the hole as you need to get a skim of filler in the top to bring it back up level.
Take a grinding disc on your angle grinder and grind off any very high points on your welds and bring them down level with the lid surface then very gently with a hammer, tap the edges of the now patched hole so ever so slightly bend them inwards (only very slightly tho) Then throw in a skim of filler.
At which point, i totally ran out of both light and dry weather. So i’ll update this post with a second part in a day or so.
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