2007 Ford Focus Rusted Engine Cradle

Nice going :+1:

Bear in mind the rust you see may only be 10% of the actual rust that is present. Have a mechanic put the vehicle on a lift and carefully inspect everything on the underside for rust.

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Yeah thatā€™s why they found this problem. I went to my mechanic to get an oil change. When mechanic inspected carefully then lifted up they saw that problem. I know that my rear subframe is rusted too but itā€™s still in solid piece, cant poke a screwdriver through. YET! ha. I might need to clean it up and sand it down and put some protection on that this summer. Everything else is in pretty good condition, some little normal surface rust here and there, so i will treat that also when the weather gets warmer. So hopefully nothing more will come up or major.

I donā€™t live in Pulaski anymore. I moved to NH over 30 years agoā€¦Lot less snow and a lot more sun.

I would hope that the floor pan where the subframe attaches has not also gone south due to rust.

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Rightā€¦but saying that eliminating water accumulation solves the rust issue is like saying that adding crumple zones solves the safety issue. Thereā€™s still lots of places that water may accumulate under just the right conditions, just like there are certain kinds of crashes where crumple zones were unintentionally ineffective (small overlap front offset crashes, anyone?).

The only way to completely eliminate these ā€œhiddenā€ water accumulation areas is to model the accumulation of water under an extremely large number of scenarios, and thatā€™s what finite element analysis (FEA) can bring to the table. Modern FEA didnā€™t existing in the late 70s or early 80s.

So Iā€™m saying youā€™re right, and FEA helps make you more right :slight_smile: