Rusted A pillar

[whtbronco]

I decided to take a few days and repair the driver side rocker panel on my truck. The lower B pillar support had rusted similar to the passenger side so I figured it would be a fairly easy repair. I was shocked when I stuck my endoscope in the opening I had cut out to find the C pillar in perfect shape no rust at all. I about freaked out when I looked up front at the bottom of the A pillar. Some of it is entirely gone and it appears that the rust goes up above the 6" or so to match the replacement the rocker. Has me kinda concerned.

It's hard to believe the inside is this bad without a single sign of rust on the inner rocker, outer rocker or firewall.

 

[whtbronco]

Well I figured out the cause of this rust. The dang sunroof drain ends right above the bottom of the A pillar. Thanks Ford. So every time it rains this area gets wet, there was a little small gravel and some dirt in there so it stayed damp most of the time I imagine. Of course there's only a small opening in the front and the small ones at the bottom of the rocker panel for the water to drain from.

Ultimately it's my fault. I don't like sunroofs and never thought they were a good idea. Horizontal windows that are guaranteed to leak are a bad idea, but my wife wanted it and I foolishly gave in. Oh well.

Sunroofs increase interior temps in the summer, add to the maintenance requirements to keep the drains clean and the additional weatherstripping that needs to be cleaned and protected. I never even open it since I don't care for bright light. I would like to remove it and replace it with sheet metal, truth is I probably won't though.

All the rust is cut out. I still have to make the final cuts around the A pillar. Prep everything and prime it, make a new B pillar bracket and the A pillar as well.

There's no way I'll have this done this weekend, it took me 3 days to get to this point. Dang I'm slow. So tomorrow I'll replace the harmonic damper and an engine mount on my daughters car so I can get to work Monday.

 

[whtbronco]

The A pillar has been cut out and is ready to be rebuilt, as is the B pillar bracket. In fact I thought I was done removing sheet metal until some foam at the rear wheel well caught my eye. I cut the foam off and there was rust under it. It's pretty minor, just surface rust in the seam where the rocker meets the fender. So I have a bit more to cut out yet. I thought I'd be done today including my daughters car.

Here's a pic of the rust at the bottom of the A pillar.

 

[whtbronco]

Why is there injected foam between inner fender and firewall flanges? There's two flanges with spot welds. The outer one is two layers metal to metal. The inner one is three layers, the outer layer is for the rocker panel and has been cut away in the attached pic. It has a gap between the three layers that was filled with black injected foam, there's a hole just above my cut on the inside that appears to be where the foam was injected.

I pulled the rear fender flare and found an area of rust there as well. There's something soft and white, almost like caulk between the inner fender out and outer fender. It's just odd compared to my older vehicles. This is rusted through an area about 2" x 3". I suppose maybe it'll end at some point.

Does anyone know if this foam and caulk like stuff is flammable and do I need to replace it for any reason? If it's simply to seal the areas I'll remove it it'll be sealed up during reassembly anyway.

 

[whtbronco]

Seems everywhere I look that I find this grey/black foam there's rust. Not sure if it was noise or to seal it off, but it's fairly soft and porous so it holds water. It is just barely flammable. With direct flame it will light, but the flame goes out as soon as the lighter is turned off. I held the lighter on it for 10 seconds and it did keep burning for 3-4 seconds after the lighter was removed. I'm not real worried about welding around it at least.

The wheel well rust was a bit more than I expected. I'll cut it out a little more to clean up the lines, but for now it's primed to keep the durn rust away.

Time to start making the pieces for the A and B pillars.

 

[whtbronco]

I put the new rocker panel sheet metal up to the truck to mark the locations to start trimming it to fix. When I pulled it off I saw a flake of rusty metal. Turns out there is more foam, more rust and with the simple push of a screwdriver a new hole. So today I will start with removing the tire for access to cut out a few square inches in the lower front of the driver side rear wheel well.

Between the foam and sunroof drain Ford did a miraculous job of hiding future rust, LOL.

 

[whtbronco]

I should not have been surprised, but once again I was. The C pillar which is the front of the wheel well was rusted due to the rear sunroof drain. There's a plastic bracket in there primarily held in by soft injected foam and the drain dumped water on that so the water had to soak through the foam to get out. It appears there is a molded area on the inner side of the plastic bracket that perfectly matches the drain hose. So I removed the foam from that and ran the hose through it. Here's some pics of the area.

The repair panel for the C pillar and the bracket for the B pillar are ready to be welded in. I started making the A pillar repair panel. I hope I can get the repair panels welded in and the rocker panel trimmed and welded in tomorrow. I'm very slow though so it's unlikely.

 

[whtbronco]

Well I judged that foam wrong. It did catch fire from welding. It doesn't burn very well and simply blowing into the 1/8" or so opening from removing foam that had rusty metal in it put it out.

The repairs to all 3 pillars are complete. The rocker has been trimmed to fit the B pillar.

Maybe next weekend I'll get this wrapped up.

 

[whtbronco]

Well it took an awful lot more time to complete, but it's done. Can't say I learned anything new replacing the rocker panel, fixing the A, B and C pillars along with the fender. Body work is hard work, harder than mechanical work in my opinion. Auto body techs do not get paid enough. Rust is awful and sunroofs cause problems.

I was reminded today driving it to and from work today why I go through the effort to maintain this thing. Driving our cars, 2002 and 2003 Monte Carlo's, is absolutely awful in comparison.

 

[whtbronco]

So I figured the driver side rocker panel was getting bad because just like the passenger side I had developed a squeak that I could not track down. It seemed like it was squeaking around the B pillar. Replacing the rocker panel resolved it again. The passenger side rocker panel had significant holes before I got to it and the lower B pillar backet had about 2" rusted away completely. The driver side was not even close to this level of decay. I had just some pin holes/bubbles in the rocker and the B pillar bracket was not compromised just heavy surface rust so I'm a bit surprised.

Anyway, if you have a squeak around the B pillar or 2nd row out seats take a look at the rockers, you may find your issue. With a borescope you can look inside the rocker panels from the back side and there's even a hole behind the forward side of the B pillar bracket that allows for inspection. I found this when I cut a rocker off the first time.

And to repeat myself, it's so nice driving the Expedition again compared to a car. There's no struggle or pain get in, be in or get out of like I have with cars.

 

[drankinatty]

Well,

Your pictures are worth 1000 words. (though equal parts scary) I'm hoping I don't find the same amount of rust, but with the '05 EB 4x4 with sunroof (that leaks), I'm expecting things are not too pretty. The issue is we live in a heavily wooded area with Pines, Oaks, Elm and about a hundred more varieties of native trees. For all the good Ford put into the gen. 2 Expeditions, there were a couple of ... exceptions. The grill keeping the wiper-well debris free and the sunroof drains are two prime examples.

While the plastic grill over the wiper-well is easy enough to remove and clean under, the areas where it meets the A-pillar and then down the sides behind the door hings are almost impossible go ensure are free of debris that could block the drain-path. I hadn't even considered the C-pillar route until your pictures for the rear-drains.

The plastic grill over the wiper-well is course enough that it lets all matter of oak leaves, acorns, acorn (whatever you call the part of the bud that holds the acorn while it's growing) and pine straw pass freely through. Driving disperses the debris across the entirety of the well and down the sides into the A-pillar area. The wife parking under a large oak at work every day only exacerbates the problem.

Thank you for your pictures. Finding a good diagram of the drain routing and any cleaning procedure (other than running weed-eater line down the drains with liquid-plumber to clear any blockage) has been elusive. (I'm not sure I'd want the liquid-plumber touching any of the plastic or rubber parts of the drain-lines). Your picture and description make clear with the lines stopping behind the sheet-metal and debris in the area also being a problem shows the lines themselves are only part of the problem.

I've judicially reached behind the door hinges into as much of the openings as I can. (using a 18" bamboo leaf stem (not the main shoot, the side shoots that the leaves grow on) makes a fantastic paint-safe probe less than 1/8" in diameter on the small end, that is rigid enough to dislodge most of the leaves, acorns and pine straw that can be seen. (a lot of it is just mulch at this point adding to the challenge)

If you have any other pictures or advise on your panel clean-out that may. in any way, be considered helpful, please think about adding them to your post. This is by far the best collection of sun-roof leak cause and effect information I've found, and I've looked casually for the past couple of years. Even TSB 08-24-8 about the leaks when running vehicle through the high-pressure car wash doesn't provide detail on anything but the rear trough seal.

May also consider adding "Rusted A-Pillar (leaking sunroof)" to the title of the thread so that causality is clear in the title. I think that's likely the reason I hadn't found this until joining the forum.

Thank you again for collecting and posting this information, it is read and appreciated. I'll keep a blow by blow of my encounter with the panels and try and do likewise.

 

[Hamfisted]

This is like a running advertisement to avoid sunroofs in your vehicle.... Geez ....

 

[GlennSullivan]

I was a huge sunroof then moonroof fan. Every vehicle I owned had to have one. Then I as I got older, I realized not only did I no longer open the roof, I pretty much always kept the sunshade closed. Haven't bought vehicles with roofs that open in 8+ years.

 

[whtbronco]

I have never liked sunroofs/moonroofs, because all of our windows leak. Why knowing it's going to leak would we want a horizontal window, that needs a drain at each corner. Not to mention it increases the interior temperature. Maybe in the winter that's not so bad, but in the summer additional heat is miserable. Some people really like them, I never open it except to clean and for maintenance so for me it's just a hassle. Another thing on our Expedition that I gave in to because my wife wanted it.

There is a hole, maybe 3/4" in diameter, on the inside of the A pillar you can put an inspection camera into. This will give you little bit of a look at the area where the sunroof drain is. I believe there's like a 3" long oval hole just in front of the C pillar that you could try to run an inspection camera into as well. You won't see as much back here, but it sure would be interesting to see if the drain hose is positioned correctly. Mine was not.

I'm sorry I have no additional pictures. All the pictures I saved from this adventure are already attached to this thread.

 

[whtbronco]

I did manage to find 2 more pics not previously posted on my wife's phone. I thought she had deleted them all. Anyway, I'm not sure they will be of much additional help, but here they are. One of the A pillar, that does at least show the little hole in the inner rocker panel, I was referring to possibly putting an inspection camera into. The other one is from the inside the wheel well of the C pillar as I found it after removing the rusted metal.