My '96 is going strong. I found two rust spots on the roof. One on the left front corner and the other at the right rear corner. Sanded, filled, and painted each. That got me wondering about typical rust spots.

• What are the common rust spots on a 1996 Cherokee?
• What can be done to prevent them?

Any pics would be most helpful.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Sorry I can be of no help. I live in Arizona!!

Seriously, I really feel for you guys in the rust belts. Has to be a real bear working on rusty mechanical components and dealing with rusting out body panels.

 

Floor boards and rocker panels.

 

Arizona FTW we don't even know what rust is on cars! Lol

 

Sunburned paint jobs we're very familiar with though!!

 

You lucky Arizonans. I wish up here they'd just teach people to actually drive and make winter tires mandatory than spray that salt crap on the road. It's gotten to the point where if there's a teeeensy tiiiiny bit of flakes on a not-even-below-freezing day, out comes the salt. The roads look like giant grey pretzels (used to be black, til they salted them). I say if it snows, it snows - deal with it this is Canada! If you don't like it then move somewhere where the weather is boring. Er I mean Arizona....

Rockers and floors are indeed the most likely suspects. I'm also seeing rust creep up around the rocker area, like the bottoms of doors, and lower hinges. Posts that the seats are sitting on don't look very nice either - I'm terrified of what I'm going to find under the carpet. I'm pretty confident the only decent bolts on my XJ are the manifold ones. Even the air cleaner is seized!

Best advice is to crawl underneath and take a look around. You can get away with no ramps or jackstands by just parking the front or rear up a few inches on a sidewalk or something... heh

 

I've heard reports of some XJ models/years just coming off the factory line with cheap paint jobs... I live in NH and mine has had, or has very little rust. Mainly because the original owners took care of it.

Check the roof, rear quarter panels, under the fender flares, rocker panels, front-bottom fenders, around weather stripping/trim, bottom of doors (open them), around molding, around windshield. Those will be the immediate problem areas.

More importantly is rot, which in my state, will fail an inspection. Only real fix for that is replacement parts, or welding.

Surface rust, just take a wire wheel drill attachment to it. Easiest thing to do. Don't even try spraying over it if it's humid/wet. It's hard repairing rust up here in the summer months because the humidity will instantly collect moisture on a freshly sanded/brushed rust spot. You can't paint over moist metal or it will just keep it there and rust again.

 

X2^.... Also if you use any filler (Bondo), you must remove all rust, and seal the metal with some sort of primer/sealer before applying, as Bondo absorbs water.

 

Best to treat the area with a product called RustMort. Kills the rust.

 

Lotta salt used on the roads here in the winter. I once found a small rust hole in the Peeps floor. I have used chopped fiberglass (tiger hair) and extra coats of resin with long term success, your climate may be friendly to a fiberglass application, resist water better than a bondo. If u can use metal to patch.

 

That makes me wanna puke!!

 

X2 same in the Scottsdale area

 

Yeah here is Arizona this is what we see all to often



This is about the extent of rust I have on mine down in Tucson, Az. Still having a hard time finding the same colored door to throw on there after some some A**hole hit me.

I have heard that keeping the paint waxed and maintained reduces rust especially in the rocker area but what fun is that on a jeep?