The rust looked a bit worse then it was because I jammed my digital camera in the rear cowl. They are really extreme closeups. In fact the pictures on the site are chronological from top to bottom and you can hardly see the rust holes in the first few pictures. Most of what was in the cowl was light surface rust.
I had the work done at a local body shop. They cut out an area around the rust holes (some of the pictures (#27 - #32) show the size of the areas that were cut out), ground down all of the rust, and then treated all of the metal with a rust converter/inhibitor. They then fabricated some metal patches from scrap, welded them into place, used a bit of professional filler to smooth over the welds (I know lead work would probably have been better, but I don't know anyone that does lead work), primed, and sprayed black lacquer to match the original paint.
The body shop also made some small alignment adjustments to my hood and driver's door and did some spot touch ups where the paint was chipped. Unfortunately they couldn't buff the small touchups very well because they would have buffed through the original paint (all except the passenger door is the original paint job).
Finally, the body shop had an outside "dent guy" use those plastic hammers to remove a small ding in the hood.
Everything was $440 (including $40 for the ding removal). The guy who runs the shop is a friend of mine. I did supply the paint (came with the car).
Sad thing is that the only reason the car rusted in the first place was that two of the undercarriage drains were blocked with dirt so rain couldn't drain properly.
[ 08-01-2003: Message edited by: Yoda ]
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