Good thing I had to take all that out to install my Oswald Performance rear triangle brace.  No sign of rust but the car has spend 90% of it's life in Texas

Pics...

Damn, made me realize I hadn't inspected that far up when I did my install.  Thankfully the rear interior is still out.  Confirmed that mine are rust free.
This should be a fucking sticky for people to know to get it checked if they live up north!

iamchris wrote:

vr4ownzyou is a genius

Now I don't want to take my interior out to put in a new carpet and insulation. Since my car only spent three years up in Burlington, Vermont I hope I won't find anything like this.    

It looks far worse on the LH side than it really is. I will sand most of it off and cover it with POR-15, which is already in order. The RH side is the problem side - there is a hole in the inner panel about 1/4" in diameter. Thankfully, the car did not have to spend last winter up north, which likely helped to curb the spread of the rust.

Every car I have ever owned has gotten rusty to some degree, this car is no different. I am very much looking forward to owning a car in the south, as rust is a non-issue.

As others have posted in NASIOC, the root cause of the problem is a lack of a seal on the bolts that the seatback latches to. Capillary action pulls the water into the cabin where it soaks into the foam under layer and sets against the relatively unprotected inner body panel. My pictures are the result.

I will continue to post pics as I fix the problem here in this thread.

Skorpion25i wrote:

I was having a hard time figuring out where this is. I'm going to have to inspect mine... hopefully it's as simple as a little wire brush and some POR. Here's to wishing 

Me too. Getting a little worried. Krazy any chance you can take a picture further zoomed out to give a little perspective?

Scargo wrote:

&     Unfortunately, if you read thru the NASIOC thread, a wirebrush and POR15 won't do it, it's rusting from the inside of a doubled panel that Subaru "intelligently" drilled thru for the upper seat brackets then failed to seal well enough to survive around a decade of flexing.  Really requires a cut/weld replacement. Pisses me off.

Noo.....   

As info, you have to take everything from the rear cushions back to get the carpeted side panels out...

1.) remove rear seat cushion
2.) remove trunk floor bits and jack
3.) remove rear seat back (hint: unbolt cushions from center hinge)
4.) remove rear plastics around rear 1/4 windows
5.) remove side carpets
6.) remove foam behind carpets. The square clips were such a bitch to remove I left them in and gently removed the foam around/off them.

Good time to change out the fuel filter

Borrowed a borescope and took a look down behind the interior panel.  Yup, plenty of rust in there   Anyone report this on NHTSA's website yet?  A seatback latch failing could kill a rear seat passenger in an accident.  At the very minimum the rust holes could allow exhaust gases to enter the passenger compartment.

So I've been quite busy lately (including a business trip to Mexico last week) so working on this has taken a back burner, until today. I got my POR-15 from Amazon for $45 shipped for a quart (Prime FTW).

I got out my collection of wire wheels and my cordless Dewalt drill and went nuts. Everything in the pics below has one coat of POR-15, and will eventually have 4. POR-15 flows really well, and I think that I was able to fill in most of the holes.

I started on the minor rust on the hatch corner:


I then did the spare tire well:


Then some minor cover up on the back side of the LH strut tower:


This is the front side of the LH strut tower. After cleaning it with the wire-wheel, it was clear that there was a lot of what looked like rust above was really just rust staining. Brake cleaner took a bunch of it off. Most of the rust was relatively minor and none of the inner panel (under the latch) was not significant. I also went nuts with the POR-15 on this side because there did not appear to be any black paint on it (reference the above pics).



Then I got to the right side. It's clearly the worse of the two sides, but oddly, the rust was in a place that I have not seen on any other thread. After cleaning with the wire wheel, a hole the size of a quarter opened up, and two other holes appeared, both smaller than the other.



Unfortunately, the pain continues. I found some more rust above the RH tail light...

Last edited by krazykarguy (2015-05-02 22:04:35)