They always rust, right there.

bent metal

We all know it. If your stepdown has rust, it will be in the rocker. Right where the factory stuffed in all of that steel wool. Or whatever it is. You hope the frame isn't rusted too. But it usually seems to be.

bent metal

Cut out the bad. Make new pieces and weld um' in.:)

RL Chilton

Great work, like always. Was the driver side as bad? Is this a customer's car? How was the back end?

GrimGreaser

Well, whaddaya know. That IS where mine is rusted out. Good to see it cut apart, before I get in there and cut it apart. Hell, I thought the rats packed all that stuff in there...



Thanks for pics, awesome job.

bent metal

Thanks Russell.:) Yes it's a customer's car and the driver's side has a little rust. Small enough that the painter should be able to handle the repair. This is going to be a driver with the focus on function more than anything else.

You mention the back of the frame. I know most people will say the stepdowns rust out in the back more than in the front. But of the few I've seen, I've seen more rust in the front/side rails. Like this car. This car has no rust at all in the back, and no undercoat under the car, anywhere, and it doesn't look like it ever had undercoat. Don't know if that has anything to do with anything, rust wise. In my opinion (this is just my idea now):D, perhaps the cars you see with more rust in the back and less in the front are from areas where the roads are salted. Or just plain get more moisture. The salt or water gets thrown up in the back from driving and they rust out. Those would be cars from the North and East. The cars I mostly see are from the South/West. Those cars stay pretty dry. Maybe that is why I see more of the rust in the front, where that steel wool is piled up. My guess is that folks that see the rust more in the back are in the North, or back East. That's my thinking anyway.:)

I did another job like this a while back and posted pictures here. The rust was much worse and the frame 'box' had to be remade on the inside and outside. This car only needed a patch on the inside, and the outside completely remade. Anyhow, that other car had rust that extended into the seat supports and also the A-pillar. But it wasn't rusty in the back. However the front was so rusty we were worried about the car breaking in half! ...That's how I remember it.:)

Aaron D. IL

There are mud flaps behind the front tire that would supposedly minimize what gets kicked back there. I've seen a lot of cars with them missing though. Is it possible the mud flaps themselves trap moisure ???

53jetman

I think you'll find a drain tube there in the cowel from the cowel ventalater. The water that gets in the cowel vent is drained into that area, and the fiber or steel wool as you call it tends to stay wet and cause the rust in the rockers and frame area.

[Deleted User]

53jetman wrote:

I think you'll find a drain tube there in the cowel from the cowel ventalater. The water that gets in the cowel vent is drained into that area, and the fiber or steel wool as you call it tends to stay wet and cause the rust in the rockers and frame area.

Hit the nail directly on the head Jerry! The drain is indeed the prime contributor to the rust problems in this area. Good question to ask at the next Hudson Trivia contest.

RL Chilton

That's what I thought . . . Jerry pretty much nailed it on the head. That "steel wool" wasn't actually steel, either. Some kind of fiber, which holds moisture more than steel wool would.

As far as undercoating, I haven't seen an original undercoating. Only the petroleum-based tar used as a seam sealer, but no undercoating, as such. Not from the factory, anyway. I'm pretty sure that Hudson never used any undercoating. But, hey, I've been wrong, before.

Aaron D. IL

RL Chilton wrote:

That's what I thought . . . Jerry pretty much nailed it on the head. That "steel wool" wasn't actually steel, either. Some kind of fiber, which holds moisture more than steel wool would.



As far as undercoating, I haven't seen an original undercoating. Only the petroleum-based tar used as a seam sealer, but no undercoating, as such. Not from the factory, anyway. I'm pretty sure that Hudson never used any undercoating. But, hey, I've been wrong, before.

I've seen undercoating in the trunk but not under the car. LOL I imagine any undercaoting that was added on any Hudson (esp in the mid-west) was done by a dealer or another garage. Someone once told me that shops used to spray the underside or cars with used oil because it was cheap and repelled the water/moisture. Not sure if that is true but I have encountered a few Hudson's caked with 3 inches of dirt and stuff under the frames.....which is exactly what perserved them.

[Deleted User]

Russell:

...That "steel wool" wasn't actually steel, either. Some kind of fiber, which holds moisture more than steel wool would...

The material was called Horse Hair... this was coated with some sort of rubber spray... when the dirt got into this material it created a brick of dirt that usually stayed damp or even wet.... today we forget that during the Stepdown era the roads were usually not paved and a highspeed trip down a dirt road created a lot of dust and dirt which found it's way into the cracks and crevises of Hudsons.

During my recent vacation... we relived abit of this type of living... road to our mountain log cabin was not paved. My wife was very dismayed by the "dirt" that accumulated on her car.

Unknown

Just for reference, this is the cowl drain off a '49. I don't know what they were thinking for this. The only thing that would make this rust worse is to plug the drains in the rocker with some sort of steel wool looking fiber mesh.:(



It would have cost pennies to just run the tube down to the bottom of the chassis where it would not cause any rust issues.



-Bryan

53jetman

Hudson308 wrote:

I've seen a number of MN cars sprayed on the bottom with what looks like asphalt/tar, Russell. Might have been sprayed by a dealer or dealer subcontractor. It does a pretty decent job of keeping the frame from rotting, if the car doesn't have a gazillion miles on it.



Attachment not found.

I don't have pictures to share, but my '51 Commodore Six that my father sold to my Grandfather new came from the factory with undercoating (this was a very early production unit, as it was delivered before the end of 1950). Most of which is still there after 110,000 miles of midwest driving. The chassis is really pretty solid with but a few small rust thrus. We also did some undercoating in our shop, but because of the mess it created, interest soon dropped by the techs and mechanics.

RL Chilton

Thanks for the education, guys. It's odd, the number of stepdowns I've seen that didn't have any undercoating. I (wrongfully) assumed the ones that DID have it, were dealer added.

And that drain tube is precisely the reason mine willl run down and drain onto the ground, and not down beside the cowl. Every now and then you'll find a weak design flaw, and I feel this is certainly one of them. So easily remedied . . .;)

Geoff

That rubberised horse hair must have been Hudson's contribution to planned obsolesence. The Jets were stuffed full of it in the wheel arches and double-skinned rear guards, and inside the rocker panels, all areas where the rust comes through, because of this moisture-absorbing stuff! I tore it all out when I rebuilt my car, and can't say I have noticed any increase in body noise or vibration because of this. What were they thinking???

SuperDave

It would seem like a good Idea to at LEAST drill some holes in the bottom of this rocker area to help keep this area drained.. Until you could find time to remove the rockers and reroute the drain and fix any rust.

RL Chilton

That's a good-looking coupe!

In the "What were they thinking?" category, I'm pretty sure this was mostly a sound-deadening attempt. The early efforts to eliminate "panel ring". Fortunately, these days, we have a lot better, more efficient solutions to decrease unwanted vibrations.

[Deleted User]

I also sure Hudson engineers did not envision we would still be driving the cars 50 years later. At the time new models were coming out yearly.



They used the most economical assembly line friendly solution. I have always pulled this stuff out when restoring Hudsons.

bent metal

lincoln61 wrote:

Just for reference, this is the cowl drain off a '49. I don't know what they were thinking for this. The only thing that would make this rust worse is to plug the drains in the rocker with some sort of steel wool looking fiber mesh.:(



It would have cost pennies to just run the tube down to the bottom of the chassis where it would not cause any rust issues.



-Bryan

Ok, now I understand!:) Did this drain go to both sides, or just the pass. side?

53jetman

Both sides!

GrimGreaser

Yup. The only reason the driverside rocker isn't nearly as bad as the passenger side on mine is the hose got pulled out. Rotting out the driverside floor instead.

[Deleted User]

or the tube blocks up and then the dashboard rusts right in the corners where the A pillars meet it. oh and the critters live in the headlining and their pee eats the pillars, while the acid from the pine needles does it job on the gutters from the outside. i just scrapped a 52 pacemaker that had been eaten away very badly around the A pillar bases, to the extent the crossmember for the transmission was swelling with rust growing in it. and that was one of the good parts of the car...