Question about rust floor panels as well as headlight lense cleaning.

Holiday

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Protege 5
Bought a 2003 P5. It's in really good shape for the most part but after an inspection I was pointed out the rust underneath the car near the left and right passenger floor panels. Each area of rust where it's chewed up is about 4"x6" rough guess. Really bad on the right side but not a hole as of yet. The whole length of the panels are brown with rust but only two areas mention the rust has chewed through a couple layers.

I had planned on getting an undercoating and was told that should stop the rust from progressing for awhile. Beyond that I was told not to bother investing the money into having a body shop fix/replace/weld new panels considering I payed less than $2000 CDN for the car. Thing is aside from brake pads and rotors on the rear needing change within a couple months the car is in really good shape both mechanically and the frame and body. I'm thinking it might be worth the investment though I don't know if the body work would be the cost of another used car. Any suggestions? Invest the money for body work or just undercoat it and let it go in 2-3 years for another vehicle?

2nd question was about cleaning the headlight lenses. They have a few small cracks and it looks like they'll need a clean on the inside. Will I have to deal with glue? Bake'm, remove lenses, clean, then re-glue?

Thanks for the input in advance.
 
Oh man, I guess it's too late to warn you that those things rust like crazy, especially up here in Canada where there's snow and salt.
It's a known problem that mazda's of that vintage, right up until a few years ago, used crappy steel, and were seriously rust prone.
I've seen 8 year old Mazda 3's here in Ottawa that are completely rusted out. I mean seriously bad. No rockers left, huge holes in the wheel wells, etc. nasty stuff.
As for your car, maybe find a body shop that will weld a piece of metal in the floor as a temporary fix, then spray it with undercoating. I'm sure someone out there will do that for a few hundred bucks.
It won't be pretty, but that should give you a few years extra at least.
 
Yeah, I heard nothing but good about the car until I started questioning about rust. The only rust I have are those floor panels (particularly the two spots I mentioned) and some small amount of bubbling near the rear wheel wells. I've been looking at options, even youtube videos. I think your idea is probably the best, try and find someone who can weld a piece of metal to the floor panel and then undercoat it.
 
You can probably do what I did... I used fiberglass cloth and a bunch of 5 minute epoxy,... You could use polyester resin too but it stinks pretty bad until it's dry.

I had holes right through the floor under the drivers seat.

I found it quite easy to do with no experience.
I have a little stick welder but I suck at it and would either burn holes through the car or set it on fire.

Both polyester and epoxy bond well to clean paint or bare clean metal, so if you cut your cloth patch an inch or two bigger than the rust and just cover it up.
You won't have a hole and you can even get a bit of structural integrity out of it.

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After it was patched, I covered everything with a 50/50 mix of grease and roofing tar.
I heated up the mixture on the stove so I could stir it and it spread on really nice then kinda hardened up a bit so it wasn't quite as messy.

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I like the video,... Seems like something I could pull off.
But I'd worry about drilling into my brake/gas lines for the rivets..

I'd probably use PL Construction glue instead of the panel glue (unless it was for an exterior door panel or something similar)

The construction glue is $6 a tube... I'd just cake the area with a couple tubes then use self tapping screws..

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Self tapping screws are awesome... Just drill them in...

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In my original post I had a query about the headlight covers. The plastic headlight cover. They look like they snap on/off. Mine are pretty cloudy and cracked. I tried looking them up online to replace but all I see is the whole headlight assembly for sale. Surely you can just buy the plastic covers?
 
Ok thanks for the heads up. Seems like a waste to throw out everything just for the plastic covers. Now I know.
 
I'll take pics tomorrow but from memory I saw clips on mine. They looked like they snap out. So the 323 lampshade will fit?
 
They are the standard headlight lenses. Can be removed with heat gun or the oven trick.


Have you tried a specific headlight polishing kit? Might give that a go before you go pulling the headlights apart.
 
Polished the outside but it's the inside that are faded/dirty. Both have cracks in them so they don't seal to the elements which lead me to thinking of replacement. Either way looks like it requires the removal of body panels/bumper.
 
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