Hey there -

I've had a few 240s and a 164 and I guess I've been kind of lucky by way of rust. Until now with this wagon (1985).

It's in decent shape otherwise; I keep it running well enough and it doesn't ask for much. Noticed a trans leak though, and this has been the first in a while, so when I went check it out I noticed the floor basically rusted through in the back right passenger side. I've been taking it up on forest roads getting fire wood etc - maybe those bumpy trips helped shake some of this off.

When saw this I basically thought "well, that's not safe."

Do you think the structural integrity of this thing is at risk? Time to junk it or sell it as a parts car? Unfortunately I'm not much of a cutter/welder at this point and I've got enough on my plate that I'm not sure I want to invest in learning that on the fly here at the moment (I've welded once in my life in a shop and it wasn't pretty, ha). Maybe I could pull it off though.

Despite this, the car feels solid on the road. I keep the necessary parts mostly refreshed, so this is basically my only real concern about it now. Otherwise, its been a great 2nd/utility vehicle.

Thanks for your thoughts!

 

From your pictures, the rust looks to have affected mostly the floorpans. But then again, you don't post pictures of any of the other structural areas of the car. I got rid of my last 240 when the rust on the rear trailing arms was so bad I was afraid they were going to collapse.

 

I had rust on our 95 850T right where the delta link bolts to the floor in front of the left rear tire (bushing/mounting bolt pulled right out of the pan) so definately check for those structural points. I think I paid about $800 to have both sides worked back to "safe and sound" so repairing those floors will probably be in a 1000-2000 cost range for a shop. You can find used or after market replacement floor pans (google around, the imported after market ones are surprisingly cheap - like under $50!) then ask a shop for labor or go and buy some tools and take that welding class you've been thinking about (oh wait, that's my dream :-) .

 

I'll try to get some more pics

 

Ha, blasted encouragement. Might give a shot, just to be cool at least and get a cool vid of me welding haha

Those pans sound enticing 🤔 think they would cover the damage or would I need to find some extra pieces of metal to fill gaps etc?

Folks cut with angle grinders or something special?

 

angle grinder should work. You probably want to start top down - pull out the interior, remove carpets, sound deadening, poke arounds to find the soft spots etc. then cut to fit the replacment pans (maybe cut from the bottom to avoid fuel lines, brake lines etc!)