- Joined
- Nov 19, 2010
- Messages
- 5,908
- Country Flag
Its almost as if Toyota want chassis to rust from the inside out.
In a moment of carelessness recently I managed to forget Maria's Yaris was parked 20 yards behind my 120 and reversed out of its space across the yard and collided with her door with the OSR of the 120. The result being a dented Yaris door and a decent dent below the rear light, a cracked rear bumper, broken rear fog lamp and displaced wheel arch.
Removing the rear bumper I discovered the chassis rails at the rear were quite full of road dust as was the rear cross member, I mean in in inches.
As it can be seen I opened the end of the chassis to reveal quite an ammount of road crap ( fortunately bone dry) just waiting to get wet and hold water. The end of the chassis is blanked off with a very ineffective drain hole so not a great design. Quite obviously i opened this up and with a home made scraper ( threaded rod, bit of plate and 2 nuts) cleaned it all out then vacced it out and put the air line down it ( fron a hole in the side of the chassis near the wheel). The crossmember suffered the same procedure.
The crossmember got a quick rub down and rust converted, painted and the whole lot (inside) treated to a can of WD40 motor cycle chain lube to create an effective barrier
Its all back together now but the moral of this thread is, theres a lot going off which usually cant be seen on these 120 rear sections, the first sign when the MOT tester says " this rear chassis sections not looking good". or the tow bar falls off.
I was aware of this problem when I was looking for a 120 and some of the ones I viewed had the rear sections full of mud/road crap so I avoided those. Mine seemed better than all the others I viewed but it goes to show, its what you can't see which does the damage.
In a moment of carelessness recently I managed to forget Maria's Yaris was parked 20 yards behind my 120 and reversed out of its space across the yard and collided with her door with the OSR of the 120. The result being a dented Yaris door and a decent dent below the rear light, a cracked rear bumper, broken rear fog lamp and displaced wheel arch.
Removing the rear bumper I discovered the chassis rails at the rear were quite full of road dust as was the rear cross member, I mean in in inches.
As it can be seen I opened the end of the chassis to reveal quite an ammount of road crap ( fortunately bone dry) just waiting to get wet and hold water. The end of the chassis is blanked off with a very ineffective drain hole so not a great design. Quite obviously i opened this up and with a home made scraper ( threaded rod, bit of plate and 2 nuts) cleaned it all out then vacced it out and put the air line down it ( fron a hole in the side of the chassis near the wheel). The crossmember suffered the same procedure.
The crossmember got a quick rub down and rust converted, painted and the whole lot (inside) treated to a can of WD40 motor cycle chain lube to create an effective barrier
Its all back together now but the moral of this thread is, theres a lot going off which usually cant be seen on these 120 rear sections, the first sign when the MOT tester says " this rear chassis sections not looking good". or the tow bar falls off.
I was aware of this problem when I was looking for a 120 and some of the ones I viewed had the rear sections full of mud/road crap so I avoided those. Mine seemed better than all the others I viewed but it goes to show, its what you can't see which does the damage.
or 
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