BEWARE Of Body Seal Failure

[Strife]

I've been working on the rust issues (fairly minor, if you can consider it minor) on my 380SL. Most of it was the usual - under the side moulding strips around the holes, etc. However, there were two "biggies" that I think can certainly be attributed to body seals:

1. The body seals under the "slider pegs" at the rubber bumper corners. One hole was fairly bad, one had perforated metal directly underneath it which I exposed after a little "prodding" with a screwdriver. Brought back memories of my Camaro in Chicago - poking a hole through what you had hoped was "a little rust spot" is somewhat like the sinking feeling you get at the dentist when his/her pick probe gets "stuck" in a tooth... fortunately, I don't have to do a great job on this because much of it will be covered up by an AMG clone spoiler I have to install.

2. The body seal at the fender behind each wheel. This is a metal plate, "body tarred" and screwed on, with a rubber seal at the inside of the fender. The rubber had apparently shrunken slightly and the body tar didn't seem to have been applied adequately, bad enough to allow in moisture. This caused:

a. Rust at the lower part of the front fender to rocker joint (fairly minor)
b. Serious rust at the trailing edge of the wheel opening, perforated
c. Separation of the weld between the rocker cover and rocker

Note that this is not the "other" kind of rust in this area - the kind that happens from clogged drain passages. I pulled out enough dirt to plant flowers with inside of the front fender.

The '86+ cars have additional plastic wheel well liners and are PROBABLY less prone to this.

I think that the bumper slider seals are under $2 each, I replaced them on the 560SL. The fender seal is probably under $10. These parts caused hundreds of dollars of damage, which I'm going to patch and live with for now. If I could weld, the lower fender patch panel for the front fender would have been ordered tonight from K+K Manufacturing.

I'm using KBS' rust prevention (like POR-15) and plumber's epoxy (expensive, but better and stronger than Bondo for fairly small stuff like this) backed with a steel grille material. With liberal use of the KBS, which is really amazing, I think this will do it for several years in my not-quite-rust belt environment.