Besides the repairs themselves, one of the things technicians dislike most about recalls is the cars that come in that are absolute junk. I’ve never seen a car this rusty before.

An early 2000’s Civic came in for the airbag recall, and it looked in pretty bad shape. It was even worse than we thought when we put it in the air to check it out. Both of the rear control arm mounts had big rust holes in them, but that wasn’t the worst part.

Usually we lift cars from the pinch welds running below the rocker panels, but that wasn’t possible on this car. The entire rocker panels were falling to pieces as they rusted through.

That is carpet. Visible from underneath the car. Almost a full square foot. You could pull it down and see the pedals. The driver must’ve known this was happening, yet continued to drive it. We showed him what was going on and hopefully he went and got a new car and scrapped this one. Not a safe car.

New blog posts every Monday and Thursday, plus pictures throughout the week on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

Mechanical Malarkey stickers available for $5 anywhere in the US!

-Dan