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Old 08-02-2013, 07:37 AM
JB3 JB3 is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: RI
Posts: 7,246
Speaking as someone in the same climate, I'm DDing my 240D and the rust is visibly worse than yours, but the car is structurally still in good shape. That rust doesn't look too bad. Yeah, its going to be more extensive, and I wouldn't use that front jack point, but it might be livable.
First order of business is to determine the safety factor of the rust. What you look like you have is pretty typical salted roads rust which if you are lucky can be localized. Check your floor pans for softness, especially around the back mount points of the driver and passenger seats. You want to make sure the floors especially in those areas are solid, if not, the car is unsafe as that's where the seatbelt mounts and seat mounts. If its rusted out, and a common problem is the joint between rocker and floor can rust through, the seatbelt ends up bolted to an unsupported piece of thin sheet metal, and the seat itself can pitch forward out of the floor.
If this area is soft, I would consider the car undrivable until it were fixed, and that would make an impact on me getting it going as a driver
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