Keeping it on the road

[Paradiddle]

Firstly, apologies if this post is on the wrong thread. The title of the post isn't about driving badly! It's about keeping my wife's 2002 1.7 Puma running with MOT looming in June. Owned since 2013 and now with 60k on the clock, (1 previous owner and I've always serviced it every 5000 miles). When purchased it was (according to the AA inspector) "as if it was brand new".
When I got it home I removed all wheel liners to coat all of the underneath used a 2-part epoxy underseal overcoated with Dinitrol, and removal of rear cabin trims and seats to epoxy coat from the inside in an effort to extend it's life. It probably slowed the inevitable rust which began emerging a couple of years ago on the rear offside arch. The rust has suddenly crept to the suspension/seat-belt anchor point so is booked in for cutting out/replacing structural sections early June to pass MOT.
I then have to decide whether the cost of restoring the rusty arch is worthwhile (likely in the region of £1200 to blend the whole rear quarter). After all, it's 21 year old car so is it worth it? Head says no but heart, she say yes. My wife absolutely loves driving it (she's a careful driver) and adores how it looks. People often enquire to her about what it is and comment that it's graceful lines are better looking than modern cars (OK, we all know that).
I'll surface again late June for an update or to commiserate.

 

[WildHog75]

It's worth reparing if it's only this problem with your wifes car. I got my Puma after my grandpa passed away in 2021, he loved this car but last few years wasn't really driving and maintaining it. She was in terible mechanical condition and cost me around 2-2,5 k pounds to fix it (in my country you can no problem buy 2 solid maintained Pumas in this price) but she was in excellent body condiotion. Some small rust on rear wheel arches that I anyway changed for FRP replicas and it was all. As long as you don't have any more rust problems I think it's worth the money and time to do it I only once told my friend that has Puma that her car is better to visit scrapyard than be repaired :/ She has all the floor rusted throught, rusted rear arches, missing interior parts, mechanical problems and the car made overall around 540.000 km using it's 1.4l engine... And she paid for it around 200 pounds so reparing it for IDK like 10k pounds is just not worth it. I told her if she loves Pumas she'd better get one in better condition and keep her old one for parts donor.

 

[yippeekiay]

Hope it passes the MOT

£1200 sounds pricey to me. Shop around as I'm certain you could beat that price. I "only" paid £595 to get my Ka done. Rear quarter was welded/repaired, front wheel arch repaired, then pretty much the whole drivers side repainted as well as blending in the front & rear bumpers. I posted in this forum about it but since the forum update the pictures don't show but are in my gallery here;- Ka Repair

I know I got pretty luckiy finding a decent bodyshop (well, decent after I questioned their first effort!) but I'm sure you could get a better price for the work you need with a bit of leg work.

 

[John Woodward]

My Red Puma needs the rear arches replacing, I have a new pair of the cheap eBay repair panels (found in a Puma at the breakers yard). I have it booked in with a guy and he's quoted about £500 including paint. He was recommended to me by a friend who had the rear arches done on a Metro GTa, when I took the Puma for the quote, it turns out he did all the bodywork and paint on another friends superb Daimler SP250. He doesn't advertise and is a low key operation with minimum overheads. My mate in the trade who drove the Puma back on his trade plates when we collected the car, reckoned it would cost about £1k.