Newbie here with new/used 2003 Protege5! Seeking advice

[New Protege]

Hi folks. I am rejoining the Mazda Protege family with the purchase of a 2003 Mazda Protege5 recently (I used to have an early 90s Protege).

I like its sporty look and hatchback design!

My Protege5 does have quite a few serious looking rust spots. I don't know why. My older 1998 car has fewer and less severe rust spots. My question for you Protege5 owners is whether you would advice me to fix the rust problem? Can I just keep driving? I plan to keep it for at least a few years, but don't want to spend too much either. I would have liked to tackle the rust problem at isolated spots, but they are all over, and at least 2 body shop people I talked with suggested sanding/painting the whole car, for between $1200 to $1500 USD. It sounds kind of pricey to me. Pretty much everything else seems to work except the rust.

Do you have a bad rust issue? What are you doing about it (or not)? How fast will the existing rust keep eating up the car body?

What other general advice would you give? Common problems? (I assume you all like the car already). I am taking it on a long road trip soon, so suggestions welcome!

Many thanks, and it's a pleasure to join the Mazda Protege community (again).

 

[wallabe]

Let me say Welcome Back.

I guess I'm lucky cause my car came from Philadelphia and whole bottom plus some spots on top have rust. Not damage, but just really really rusty. You can do the age old trick of spraying the hell out of some spots with WD-40, PB Blaster, or any type of Water Displacement spray. It works on the top of the motor like the bolts and other parts to remove the rust spots. As far as the body goes it depends on the level of damage, I worked on various vehicles and can tell you that nothing beats getting the entire car sprayed over again with a protective coat underneath to prevent this from happening again. Unless you have a 30 gallon Air Tank and the tools to spray then I would say go for it. Paint should run you about $300 from a good auto paint shop, plus primer is about $100 or more depends on the base color. Clear Coat is around $75. Body Filler is $20/qt., plus the tools for filling, sanding, and making a dust free area about $60. Most of the time will be spent taking parts off to spray them.

I'm not saying this to discourage you in any way. I love taking body parts off just to get to one part on the this car. (Sarcasm) But for what its worth you do patch work to get by. But you can buy rust killer spray paint to cover up the existing spots and then spray a color match to it.

I made a post about matching spray paint for our cars and some of the members posted their goto sites on auto paint.

http://www.mazdas247.com/forum/showthread.php?123816574-matching-spray-paint-color.


Plus if you want some more info you can look through this link to find what you are looking for.

http://www.mazdas247.com/forum/showthread.php?123715657-How-To-Quick-Links-(sticky-version)

I hope you figure out a way to tackle this problem that won't send you into the danger zone and good luck.