Is it always necessary to open rocker panels on a dry car?

[Zeephyrin]

Hello,

I am looking for the advice: we restore 1966 car, which spend its whole life in Bay area. Car is very dry, we completely scrape the paint and bodyschutz off of it and then carefully sandblasted the body. Only very limited rust in very few places, such as lower corners of the rear windshield. That is about it, everything else is almost perfect metal. Should I open the rocker panels? There is no problem there, no rust, nothing. We even looked inside with a scope and found no rust flakes, just solid metal everywhere. I would hate to open perfectly fine rockers with even gaps put there by the factory, but what is the common wisdom - to leave them alone if they are fine or open them in any case as there is always something nasty hidden in there?

Thanks a lot,

[joegt3cup]

Leave sleeping dogs lye.

[Bobs 67S]

If you can put eyes on the inside and things look good - no need to open them up. What a great find.

Be sure to look inside of the cross beam that supports the front of the gas tank, battery and the torsion bar mounts. The beam's inside is uncoated metal from the factory and did collect moisture from both above and below. Take out those two rubber drip tubes for your scope access. Sure hope it is like the other parts of the car.

[haul]

small hole, camera , look inside...
decide....
done

[uai]

Looks as if you have a very early tatraplan in the shop.
And ... leave the rockers the way they are if scoping didn't bring up bad things - at least I'd do so.

Cheers

Uli

[mshaver51]

someone else suggested leaving "sleeping dogs" alone, and there is merit to that idea. if you do not do anything else, you could invest in a can of Eastwood internal frame coating, which is supposed to enable you to stop any rust that might already be inside the rockers or heater tubes. for my car, the inner rockers were rock solid, but the heater tubes were total trash. personally, i wouldn't blame you if you took the minimalist route.

if you are REALLY inquisitive, as "haul" suggested, there are inexpensive small cameras that can fit inside the heater tubes. you have dismantled the car enough that you can access the heater tubes from inside the cab and from the rear where the heater boxes mount. in this manner, you would be able to see the inside of the heater tubes.

[Zeephyrin]

Thanks everybody for ideas, will certainly use Eastwood internal frame coating, it looks like decent stuff for this application. @ uai: good eye and very close, body behind belongs to Tatra 87 (V8 air-cooled), Tatraplan (officially Tatra 600) was its successor, flat 4 air-cooled.

[304065]

AFTER you finish priming with an anticorrosion primer like PPG DPLF-- wait as long as you can to see if any rust emerges or otherwise causes coating failure- if you see none, then finish as normal. Then apply the proper Schutz like the factory did. THEN squirt ONE ENTIRE CAN of Wuerth cavity protection wax into the channel and let it drip out on a hot day. It will drip for weeks. . . and the dripping will intensify when the five minute concours timer starts, it always does.

The rustproofing on the early steel was the oil from the press-- it is long gone. But if there's no water in the panel and no way for it to get in, then you probably just have the brown scrim of surface rust on the internal parts, which the cavity wax will entomb for the next half-century.

[Barwaut]

If you can see nothing now inside and it's dry....

... it will last forever because it will be driven a mere 1000 miles a year in perfect weather, climate controled garaged...

[Fila]

If you brought car into your shop in Europe from bay area, then all cavities will have had damp cold air into them - so I would put Eastwood everywhere to be safe - having first had the car in a very dry warm environment for at least 48 hours