Rust proofing arches

[King Stromba]

Looking at the arches of the MK1 MR2 it apears that the rears at least have a double skin. Looking at the outer skin it appears to be galvanised (zinc coated in grey). Now i want to redo this zinc coating. What have people doen to protect their arches. Obviously coating the inside of the arch wouldnt work as it would only protect the inner layer. And you cant coat the outer layer as its the face that is painted. Has anyone got any clever solutions?

Im not a big waxoil fan and i think high strength zinc coating is the daddy. So ideally id like to recoat the zinc. Anyone done this?

On my williams i etch the metal with a phossphoric acid. then i scratch channels in it and zinc coat the whole lot (so the zinc is in contact with the metal for the transfer of electrons). Then i use a top coat and finally a polyeurethane paint. But the arches on a Williams arnt double skinned as they apear to be on an MR2.

Any ideas?

[ldavies83]

I'm affraid to say that Mk1s were not galvanised in any way whatsoever, import or not. I can only imagine you have a car that has had some remedial work done to it previously and has had zinc primer applied as part of the repair.

As far as the design of the wings, you are right it is a inner and outer skin. Now heres why Mk1's suffer so badly in this area:

Toyota decided to use a foam "filler" strip sandwiched between the 2 sheets and spot welded the 2 panels together,. The problem is this foam strip absorbed absolutely all types of moisture and retained it! Not Good.!

In order to successfully reverse the aging process, I've always gone down the waxoyl route, because its a tried and tested process for many mk1 owners. You have to waxoyl the inner skin from inside the boot area and the rear arch itself paying a lot of attention to the corners of the arch (obviously)

There are many restoration guides over at the Mk1 clubs website and these can be found at the repairs section of the website.