Check that roof rust !

In my on going battle to keep up with the rust on my '03 Expy, I noticed my driver's side seat belt was wet after the recent rain storms we've been having down here in south Florida lately. I don't have a sunroof. I removed the pillar trim to look for a water trail. It was coming from up high in the roof somewhere. I decided to start from the top and removed the roof rack tracks on both sides. The passenger side was fine, with standard years of dirt underneath. Cleaned it off and re-secured it to the roof, putting sealant on the retaining zcrew threads just to make sure. The driver's side was another story. The forward mount holes all had some amount of corrosion around them, and the one nearest the drivers pillar had a hole rusted completely through. I wire brushed the rust out, put some Motorcraft PM13 stop rust over the area. After all that dried I mixed up some JB Weld steel epoxy putty and sealed up the rust holes, let that dry. Went over it all with a thin layer of JB Weld Steel epoxy, let it dry, painted over it with a Rustoleum gloss black enamel. That's about as good as it's gonna get.
I'm in south Florida, and wash my Expy at least once a month. The area under the roof rack track doesn't get washed or waxed of course. Just sad to see the old Expy getting attacked by this rust. Hope to get another year out of her. But other than the head gaskets, chasing rust has been the only issue I've had with her. So it might be worth pulling the roof rack tracks off and checking for corrosion before it eats a hole through.

Nice run-through. Thanks for the heads up! Will add to to my todo list...

I just wire wheeled and primed the gutter where the side panels are glued to the top. Also had rust in the volutes at the front & rear. I was thinking about removing rack and inspecting that. You’ve convinced me to do that. I may leave the rack off and plug the holes.

Was just about to swap out my oem roof rack with a Yakima one, Ill make sure to check the rails now, hadn't even though of that. Thanks for the post!

@Hamfisted how is the JB Weld holding up? I have a similar problem with mine, see the photos. I am not good at body work.
I am considering Permatex or JB Weld, or body filler. The roof gets exposed to alot of heating and cooling, and water, so I want to fix it right. I have not had any issues that I know of with the roof rack, or not yet, just these badly designed channels that cause standing water. Let me know how JB is working out. Thanks.

It's held up well so far, but it's only been six months. But no sign of failure yet, and the paint is still smooth. Those roof channels are a constant maintenance issue for me too. I keep 'em waxed, and fix little blemishes before they get too bad. The rust hole in mine was hidden under the roof rack track, where you wouldn't really expect to see rust. Yours look pretty deteriorated. Maybe you should have a body shop look at that. You'd have to at least sand down to clean metal, then seal it, then maybe the JB Weld. But I'm not a body expert. I don't know how it would hold up on a large area like that. A body shop would probably cut out that whole area, like they were installing a sunroof, and weld in new metal. Ford really screwed the pooch when they put channels in the roof like that. They should've been lifted channels, not sunken like that. If you have good body shop in your town I'd swing by there and get their recommendations too.

Ok thanks. Ford must have figured out how stupid this is, because my 19 F-150 has similar channels, but they are continuous all the way across the cab front-rear. So any water caught in the channels dumps onto the windshield or off the rear of the cab. Doesn't just sit there and rust out the roof. Damnit.

Hamfisted said:

It's held up well so far, but it's only been six months. But no sign of failure yet, and the paint is still smooth. Those roof channels are a constant maintenance issue for me too. I keep 'em waxed, and fix little blemishes before they get too bad. The rust hole in mine was hidden under the roof rack track, where you wouldn't really expect to see rust. Yours look pretty deteriorated. Maybe you should have a body shop look at that. You'd have to at least sand down to clean metal, then seal it, then maybe the JB Weld. But I'm not a body expert. I don't know how it would hold up on a large area like that. A body shop would probably cut out that whole area, like they were installing a sunroof, and weld in new metal. Ford really screwed the pooch when they put channels in the roof like that. They should've been lifted channels, not sunken like that. If you have good body shop in your town I'd swing by there and get their recommendations too.

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How are the roof repairs holding up? I have a 2001 Expy with surface rust on roof and the body shop is telling me that he will have to grind and sand, apply Ospho, then epoxy primer and then paint and that I should expect rust to pop through again. am a bit bummed, I think he is trying to dissuade me from spending the money. How is your roof holding up?

I painted mine with UPOL raptor liner. I had some rust holes on my roof and ground them out then fiberglassed them. I used rust oleum x2 to primer them after sanding & raptor lined. No issues since. I live in Florida too and I noticed that oak tree leaves were probably what caused it. Very acidic.

It's been about a year and the repaired area has held up fine. No sign of re-occurrence. But other tiny spots continue to pop up in the channels. Just have to stay on top of them and take care of them when they're tiny. I do park under trees fairly often and they could very well contribute to the roof corrosion issues. But that's living in south Florida life.



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