Hello everyone,

so for the past months i'm in a bit of a dilemma.
The past 7 months i have spent restoring my Evo 8 (originally from the UK), but i'm debating on whether its worth it to keep it or not.
When i got the car there seemed to be nothing wrong with it, bought it a year ago for 13 000 euro.
After a while the car seemed to get a lot of issues not visible when i was inspecting it.

This is when i bought the car


It looked like a dream, but then after a month of driving it, things started to go wrong.
The paint on the left quarter panel near the gas cap came loose, which gave me all kinds of warnings signs. Behind that cap is a 1" hole.. i sadly don't have a picture of this right now. And since that is double skinned, it's just going to continue to rot.


This is nothing, but then after removing what looked like perfectly stock seam sealer revealed a huge bubble of rust. After looking at it thoroughly and removing the back end, i noticed it was in a crash in the past and just badly repaired.




Even more damage revealed when taking the bumper off. Rotten everywhere.. i guess the years of UK roads before ending up in my garage to become a queen didn't do her well..


After taking this out we thought we had room to weld in a new panel i bought, but that ended up not having enough 'metal left' to weld to..


After seeing this, my paranoia became even worse.. time to strip it and see what's going on there.
Removing the bumper didn't help, just the sight of it made me panic in silence.


Okay, lot's of beginning rust, the engine bay pillars have it too.. couldn't become worse right?

WRONG!
All the bolts are seized, about 10% of them survived, the rest broke off. Yay!


I removed most of the pictures, because they make me cry a little inside. So out came the sub frame.
What a b*tch... pictures say more then a thousand words..



When removing the subframe, the famous bolt seized up. Why not? I mean all the rest is breaking, so why not this one?




Just cut it open, like the rest of them..
Then came the underside of the car. Where do i even start here? The car was a mess.
Laying underneath 10" of space and then removing all the components on my own , and then grind all this mess off. OH BOY..





Grinded most i could off to bare metal (some spots you just cant get too) and then i used like 4 litres of brunox epoxy (rust converter + primer) on the bottom side.
Then painted it and undercoated it. I hope this holds.

 

Then i cleaned up the front (fenders, engine bay, ... same way but sandblasting it also)





All seems good, then the AYC went out. Solenoid broke off! This can't be good? :P


Then i found holes in the rear chassis legs. 2 of them.


Then another one in the rear arches of the wheel

.

A beautiful look from the inside





Is this car cursed? Or are the JDM ones that are a straight import as rusted underneath as well?
Is it worth keeping after all this work, or do i sell it and buy another one?
Because as i heard, rust always comes back.
I don't want to have a rotten car in a few years. From the year i owned it, i drove it 3 months.

Any feedback appreciated.

 

I recently saw a build series of an evo 6 on youtube from a channel called Speed Academy. They bought the evo sight unseen and turned out to have some bad rust. Check out the video see if you can get anything from it. They had some good success getting most of the rust taken car of.

Down in my part of the country the only rust i deal with is when our equipment goes to the salt mines. But the biggest issues we have is replacing electrical components and wire harnesses. I dont know much about rust restoration but from what i have seen, its tough work. Good luck!

 

If you cut the rust out and appropriately repair it, it doesn't just "come back". The time and effort being worth it is a decision only you can make..

 

it doesnt look terrible to me.
looks like your doing a good job fixing it.
if you got the time... i say keep it .
your gettin there!

 

If it was me I would just finish it. You've come so far why bother leaving it 75% done? The reward of knowing you have a restored rust free car would be greater than the money you receive after putting the car back together and listing it for sale with "some rust."
Also rust isn't cancer, if you do it right it won't come back.

 

I have similar levels of rust as your car and have done the same thing. Scrape the heck out of it, rust converter, and fluid film. Car is still doing fine (or as well as it's gonna be). I pondered swapping everything to another shell, but from what I see, even the rollers and shells are ridiculously overpriced and have just as much rust on it sometimes.

 

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I was wondering if the OP ever finished this. I'm about to start this on the underneath of my car as well so I was wondering how the rear subframe/chassis rails treated you.

 

I am also curious about how we can keep and restore the 15 years old Evo ? I just have my Evo 9 dropped off to the repair shop and need to replace the alternator. Problem is that I realize many of the OEM parts are already discontinued and I have no choice but to use a Denso remanufactured alternator now.

 

Had the body shop do mine a few years ago.

I posted some pics in this thread if it help you at all.
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ev...-bushings.html