Ka Chassis Corrosion

[piscean57]

Hello everyone,

I have been a bit of a Ford fan over the years since passing my test in 1975 - that's a clue to my age

Can't say that I have always had Fords, or that I have had the Fords I want, but I have had a few including a 1970 1600XL Capri, a 1972 Cortina 2000GT, a 1984 Escort XR31, a 1985 XR2 and a 1987 Sierra 2.0GL.

When my daughter passed her test and wanted her first car, Ford was what I thought would be a safe introduction, so this January I bought her what seemed to be a very nice 64k mileage 2002 Ka Collection with virtually 12 months MOT. I bought this from via AutoTrader from a trader called Paul Cripps who was trading as Farnham Small Cars.

6 months later when taking the car in for new bushes, we discovered that the chassis is totally rotted through in numerous places. This is hidden beneath a mixture of bodyfiller and underseal. Our local garage advised us that is was extremely dangerous and not fit for the road and that it has no signs of previous accident damage. From my investigation I have found that the MOT in Jan 2010 had as advisories ALL the points which have now rusted so it seems that whoever owned it then, simply put a new coat of underseal on. One area of filler / underseal was, however, very new looking and certainly hadn't seen a winter. Paul Cripps refused to do anything about it and my daughter doesn't want to drive it ever again. I have just sold it on eBay with a full and honest description as spares / repair.

I wrote to Ford asking what they thought about selling a product that rots into a dangerous item inside 9 years. Their response is that it is 5 years beyond it's perforation warranty so I need to deal with the seller. Since finding out this issue I have seen a number of Ka's on eBay with a similar problem and, by word of mouth, heard that Ka's are known for this.

Anyway I wondered if any of the forum members had any similar stories, as I want to go back to Ford and the more evidence I have the stronger my argument. It really isn't right in todays world that a car made by perhaps the largest manugfacturer can get to this state in the time it has.

[Danny87]

Hello everyone,

I have been a bit of a Ford fan over the years since passing my test in 1975 - that's a clue to my age

Can't say that I have always had Fords, or that I have had the Fords I want, but I have had a few including a 1970 1600XL Capri, a 1972 Cortina 2000GT, a 1984 Escort XR31, a 1985 XR2 and a 1987 Sierra 2.0GL.

When my daughter passed her test and wanted her first car, Ford was what I thought would be a safe introduction, so this January I bought her what seemed to be a very nice 64k mileage 2002 Ka Collection with virtually 12 months MOT. I bought this from via AutoTrader from a trader called Paul Cripps who was trading as Farnham Small Cars.

6 months later when taking the car in for new bushes, we discovered that the chassis is totally rotted through in numerous places. This is hidden beneath a mixture of bodyfiller and underseal. Our local garage advised us that is was extremely dangerous and not fit for the road and that it has no signs of previous accident damage. From my investigation I have found that the MOT in Jan 2010 had as advisories ALL the points which have now rusted so it seems that whoever owned it then, simply put a new coat of underseal on. One area of filler / underseal was, however, very new looking and certainly hadn't seen a winter. Paul Cripps refused to do anything about it and my daughter doesn't want to drive it ever again. I have just sold it on eBay with a full and honest description as spares / repair.

I wrote to Ford asking what they thought about selling a product that rots into a dangerous item inside 9 years. Their response is that it is 5 years beyond it's perforation warranty so I need to deal with the seller. Since finding out this issue I have seen a number of Ka's on eBay with a similar problem and, by word of mouth, heard that Ka's are known for this.

Anyway I wondered if any of the forum members had any similar stories, as I want to go back to Ford and the more evidence I have the stronger my argument. It really isn't right in todays world that a car made by perhaps the largest manugfacturer can get to this state in the time it has.

Hey Ian, let me welcome you on here and sorry for the situation you are facing with your daughters car, it sounds like a horrible thing to go through, well, I know exactly what it's like with dishonest sellers.

You've owned some nice cars, let me say that first! :D I've only been driving for four yeasrs so haven't really owned anything that nice, my first car was a gorgeous MK1 Punto Sporting, and that was stolen from me by some lovely people when I left it parked out on the road one night. My second car, which is where it becomes relevant to your situation.

It was only September of 2010 when I bought the car, it was a MK2 Punto ELX on a W plate. The car had a fully 12 months MOT and was being sold by a trader, he told me it was his wife's car and she had been using it to run around. I was only paying £500 - £600 for a car and I wasn't too worried about anything other than getting a couple of years out of it until I could afford to replace it with something newer and better.

I bought the car and it was what seemed like a real bargain, in fairness mechanically the car never let me down, which, being Italian is very rare. The only mechanical problem was overheating but I managed to sort it out by flushing the radiator and filling with coolant - cheaper than a headgasket which is what I expected. I decided to change my front brake pads a month or so into owning the car, and I jacked up and went through the jacking point - it just crumbled. I took it to a local welder I know, who repaired that particular section for £35, basically as good as a new inner sill and jacking point half the length of one side of the car.

So this raised my suspicions and I had a proper look underneath the vehicle, and I must say the advisory on the MOT certifate of "Surface corrosion in places on floorpan under vehicle" didn't seem accurate, and this was only about 6 weeks after the car had been given a 12 months MOT ticket. There's not a chance that a car could deteriorate this badly in such short time. I did some of my own digging, and the guy who issued the MOT on the car, Mr. M. Ballinger of VMS near me, was the previous owner on the V5c.

I admit I made big mistakes buying the Punto, I didn't look at it properly, I didn't check it over, I didn't check out the paper, I broke all the rules. But nobody would expect a car in this condition to have passed an MOT.

I decided to ask one of my friends to have his MOT carried out at this garage, and when it had passed the MOT tester had scraped and knocked all underneath the vehicle and in the known corrosion hotspots, if the MOT would have been carried out in this particular manner on his Punto, then it wouldn't have passed. It is quite funny how an MOT tester can issue an MOT ticket on his own car, maybe a loophole in the law?

In any case, unfortunately, Fords amongst others have issues with rust and it seems to be hit and miss. You will either be lucky or unlucky, like we were with my Punto and your daughters Ka. Ka's usually rust honestly in places you can see, the arches, the filler cap, boot, doors, outer sills etc. The thing with Punto's is they rust where you can't see, so the car would look clean and rust-free, but it's only visible once you get underneath (in my personal experience anyway).

I would really look into making some sort of claim against the guy who sold you the car, you need to gather as much evidence as possible to help you should you decide to take him to a small claims court, which I don't see any reason you couldn't.

As far as Ford goes, they will not compensate you as the corrosion gaurantee doesn't extend to this amount of time, and unfortunately you were just very unlucky and found a very poor example of a person who lied and sold you this car (assuming he knew about it, which is very hard to tell completely, but you'd expect him to have known) I don't know how people do it to people, I am an honest person so I expect the same in return, and it grinds my gears when people aren't honest or pull a fast one.

Hope that helps, some of what I've wrote isn't that relevant and please excuse bad grammer I'm on the cider tonight :D.

Dan

[btmaldon]

It does sound like you are pretty unlucky to have got a bad one. I have bought a couple of KA's for my wife, both of which have been solid underneath. We had a 2000 W reg KA2 Collection and she currently drives a 53 plate Sport KA.

This had a few surface spots of rust on the sills due to the stone chips thrown up by the wide track of the wheels. This I treated and then hammerited the sills. I also wax oiled the floor paying special attention to the lips of the sills and floorpan edges, however these were all clean.

Ford must have produced a batch of KA's that were not properly protected underneath when built.

[Danny87]

Ford must have produced a batch of KA's that were not properly protected underneath when built.

That's what I can gather, my Fiesta needed a tiny little bit of welding on the outer sill through neglect, my welding buddy said it was from the outside-in, so more than likely stone chips. Like you though I treated it all, ground out rust and I used Hammerite underbody paint on the outer sills and I've done the floorpan and inner sills too, and it does seem very good underneath. I gave it a proper look but you just don't know what sins you might find when buying a secondhand car.

I noted a lot of waxoyl underneath and in all the nooks and crannys, so I can only assume my particular Fiesta had a good treatment of waxoyl at the factory, in fact in some places it could be seen almost like it was dripping and wet still - they must have proper plastered it on.