Rear arch rust

Year 2000 car started to get some small paint bubbles on the rear arches a while ago so last year I attacked it with a dremmel and quality anti rust materials thinking that would sort it, unfortunately it came back a year later so whilst it was in for a partial respray I asked them to sort it. They cut out the offending patches and you can see why it couldn’t be addressed from the outside. The arch comprises of double metal layer and over the years the interior paint protector fails and rust starts to breed between the two surfaces. The outer arch was cut out and after treatment a new patch will be welded in. I suspect a few 996’s will be affected by this now.

.Inner surface rust.

Like this you mean?

Exactly, but mine wasn’t as bad as yours. Those paint bubbles don’t look too bad until you dig deeper. Old cars :sad:

I need to address this now on my 2003 C4S before it gets worse. The car lived most of its life in Aberdeen. Mine looks like yours JasonH1969. What's a ball park for this? Spoke to one garage who wanted £2,500 (+VAT) plus me to supply two brand new front wings which I posted about previously and think were £700 each from memory? Did include respraying the whole car apart from the roof. All in looking at the best part of £5,000 which is probably about 1/4 to 1/5 of the car's value. Is that reasonable? Have no idea, never commissioned this kind of work before but understand that likely to be far worse on the inner liner than appears on the outside so potential to be opening a can of worms. But it does need sorting.

The "privilege" of driving a higher mileage car means that I've seen and been through worse than this..(!) I had both rear arches repaired in this way a few years ago and numerous metal cut put and replaced through the sills, but the time has come to revisit the arches and perform a more significant removal and repair. The blocker to date re. this has been that it required escalation to a full replacement quarter section. However, Design 911 have just started offering a more 'traditional' repair section for the rear arches via their 'Retroline' - I've spent years waiting for this and already had a quote for the full work... thankfully this can now be considered as one of the options, which will make sense for more of us based on a cars value or usage https://www.design911.co.uk/p/rust-repair-rear-1-4-panel-arches-porsche-996/ (they also offer the rear end of the sill section) Hopefully others start developing and offering similar.... FYI - £5k is certainly not outrageous for the work you describe. Pay for quality or cost, don't try and get quality at a low cost(!) Inner structures tend to be higher gauge than the outer sections/lips so wont typically suffer as much, but nothing is immune and for a decent repair metal will need to be cut out until good metal is reached before any new metal goes back in i.e. so perfectly possible for £5k to become £5k+

I’m in Kent and was quoted £2000 to sort the rusty rear arches + respray bonnet (stripped back to metal) front bumper, both rear wings & wing mirrors, roof strips and sort/respray small dent in front wing & buff some overspray on the roof from an old repair. £5000 sounds expensive to me even for a full respray, it’s my main car to drive all year round, I know it will collect road rash again but it will look considerably better than it did before and hopefully I’ve addressed all the rusty areas over the last year and a bit.

I need to do something similar which body shop was this?

I get the car back at the end of next week, they haven’t been quick but I wasn’t in a rush (I’m off work at the moment). It’s a local bodyshop that was recommended by a friend in our village car club. I live between Sevenoaks & Tonbridge so if that’s in your manor give me a PM.

There is a chap on one of the UK 996 Facebook groups that is doing arch repair sections for the 996. Anyone have any experience of these?

The work to mine was £1,500.00 with vat. They cut out and replaced the inner arch section, cut out and replaced the outer arch, new stone chip underneath, waxoyl or equivalent inside the arch cavity and a full respray of the whole passenger side. To be fair they did a great job and had to paint more than they expected but stuck to their quote.

Quotes source post: 1434102

Strange coincidence. I live exactly there and am looking for very similar work. Was your result good? Do you have the name of the bodyshop?

Hi Wilhud, The paint still looks great but a small bubble soon appeared on a rear wheel arch, they tried to correct but the workshop ended up cutting out a section 10x bigger on both sides and fabricating another patch to replace. The rust must have spread much further than expected internally. It’s been fine since and has been driven through the Winter and plenty of rainy days. I don’t think they made much profit on my job so I gave them a bit extra for their service, the owner ‘Fletch’ was apologetic and great to deal with. They seem really busy these days and you may have to wait a while. Hilden Borough Body Worx hildenboroughbodyworx.com I’m sure they’ll remember my car, Andy with the blue 996.

This rusty arches is going to be a major killer of the 996. mine was very bad

Had my rear arches, rocker cover fronts and front arches done last June at Summerhouse Stafford , mostly preventative and all for £2000 all in.