W114 / W115 rust repair (journey with pictures) -PART VII
by Patryk Rebisz

Replacing the Front Right Rocker

The right front floors were “replaced” by the second owner I bought the car from. He clearly didn’t know what he was doing—due to minimal rust protection, the floors were already rusting through again barely five years after the “fix.” This means the floors no longer provide structural integrity. Since I’ll be removing the outer rocker, I decided to add a reinforcing pipe to the door opening.

1. The reinforcing pipe is visible, and the bare rocker is being test-fitted:

2. Before cutting out the rusty rocker, I welded in another support pipe for safety and stability. The gray area on the inside shows a small patch I repaired a few years ago. The rusty part held by screws is the previous owner’s repair:

3. This part of the rocker will be attached with a lap weld to increase the strength of the joint. The original rocker has creases formed for the replacement to rest on:

4. The front will be joined with a simple butt weld. As you can see, replacement repair panels are never perfect:

5. The repair has been welded in. What you don’t see is that the back of the repair panel was painted for rust protection:

6. The outside has been painted for temporary rust-proofing:

7. As you can see, the bottom of the panel is just hanging, waiting to be attached to the replacement floors:

Part VIII in the next post.