I don't think you can do much to mitigate that other than to replace the panel.

If you were determined not to do that, you'd need to remove all the rust and either fill with bondo, or weld ...then smooth and paint.

This might be because of the car's history around salted roads and not rinsing the wheel well. I did that a lot, though I still got rust...not quite as bad as yours.

Anyway, that rust will also be present under your rocker cover. Hope you save your car...it's better than you think!

 

It's quite bad. I did rust stuff before, but years ago and not on arches. What do you mean rust under the rocker?

 

oof thats going to require a lot of work to done properly

 

Under the plastic rocker cover. That's where I noticed my rust spot first...decent guess yours will have it too. I'll see if I can find realoem diagram for what I mean.

#1

RealOEM.com - Online BMW Parts Catalog

BMW parts 3' E46 328i Single components for body-side frame

www.realoem.com

 

Before you do anything, ask yourself how much longer you intend to own the car and if it's worth it to you to spend more than the value of the car to fix the rust. If the wheel arches are this bad there is going to be more rust that you don't see (yet) in other places.

To fix this correctly you're looking at having a body shop cut and weld in patch panels and then bodywork and paint work to blend everything back in. You'll easily spend a more than the value of the car to have all the visibly rusty spots fixed, and then a short time later you'll find more rust bubbling through at the rear, or along the door sills, at the bottom of the doors, etc.. Rusty cars don't become un-rusty without a big investment. Are you emotionally attached to this car for some reason and plan to keep it forever? This would be the only reason to spend this level of money restoring it vs. selling it and buying one that is rust free. It doesn't make financial sense to fix the rust as these cars just aren't worth enough.

Alternatively, you can grind back the rust as much as possible and slap on some bondo and paint, but that will only hold up for so long before the rust comes back. If you are looking for a stop-gap good enough for now type solution, this might be acceptable to make the car look 80% better until something big fails mechanically and the car is ready to go to the salvage yard.

Or you can just make peace with the fact that you have a rusty car, and leave it alone. My sedan has rust starting in half a dozen places and in a few years will probably look worse than yours. I'm cool with that though as it's just a daily driver and my winter beater. I'll keep fixing it mechanically to keep it reliable, but the day something major goes wrong it's done.

 

///Mark_D raises an excellent point, How long will this car last?

What you have found is ugly as sin, but it does not really affect anything. This car will die a slow death at the hands of many miles under its belt long before the parts fall off due to the rust. The repairs will not be cheap unless you can do them, but if you could do them you would not be asking us.

 

I edited the title to make the issue clear on the forum list.

 

Doesn't change anything.

You cannot fix this on a budget unless you can fix it yourself, and then you would not be asking. If you are keeping the car to hand down to your grand kids, then it might be worth the cost of a body shop to fix it, but it won't be cost effective to clean up the mess so it looks better. And, except for looking bad, it doesn't matter.

 

It won't hurt to start looking around for quotes. Find a shop who specializes in rust restoration and go from there. The bigger shops won't touch it but there are plenty of shops who will. I'll be getting my drivers side quarter done next spring and was quoted about 3k for the work and it's in much worse shape than that. I need a quarter, rocker like yours and inner quarter up to where the amp is mounted. Again my father owned it since new and its been religiously maintained. I've pretty much replaced everything so it's definitely worth it to me. If you haven't really done anything yet then I would find a rust free example from down south.

 

Take it to a body shop where they know what they are doing. That is a big repair.

 

Seems everyone very pessimistic here - when we only have half a view.
To see the full picture jack up and remove wheel and look at the inside lip. Has the rust penetrated from the wheel arch through the seam sealer to the outside.
On mine it hadn't, and was just surface rust, so I repaired with Kurust followed by POR15.
This video is about rust on E46.
These are the go to guys in UK. If panels were penetrated I wouldn't trust anyone else.

As mentioned mine were not penetrated so used this as my guide for finishing the panel.

 

I had a similar problem with my E46 Touring earlier on in the year. It was solved by have the wheel arches cut away and new ones "glued" in their place. It was all mentioned in a thread in about February. The panels cost £60 on ebay (from Poland) and the garage charged me £700 for the work. (I'll see if I can find the thread).

 

Have a read through the following thread. It has details of how myself and another chap resolved rusting wheel arch problems.

rust fixing

My 2001 330i with 283K miles needs some rust work. I don't want a newer car - I have had it since buying it in 2010 with 150K miles on it. For a few years I added 500 miles/wk for work including a couple winters. Living with the ILs so we sold our house we lived in for 20 years and with my...

www.e46fanatics.com