Unfortunately on this occasion it was myself who found out.

When I bought my 00 XJR back in November I looked over the car extensively and whilst she did need some work overall she wasn’t too bad. Over the next few weeks I did start to notice the car steamed up after driving especially in wet weather and this led me to do some digging. I discovered some dampness in the front footwell and after taking a look under the carpet I discovered there was a hole that had been repaired with fibreglass and covered with under seal. Not good. The water was soaking through and onto the floor of the car.

Today I had to strip the whole interior out of the car leaving just the dash and gear selector in place because I’d booked the car in for some welding to have that fibreglass replaced. However upon removing the whole of the carpet I discovered to my horror there was a lot more of this fibreglass bodging that quite frankly is dangerous. Both front footwell areas are full of it and parts of the sills, it’s that bad you can see daylight shining through some of it. They’ve covered it outside with thick stone chip under seal which has hidden what they’ve done, but the person responsible for this is nothing short of a criminal. If I knew who did it I’d have reported them because this isn’t their first rodeo.

As a consequence of the carpets being almost permanently damp other areas of the floor have rusted, to the point where I can put a screwdriver into the sills. This is going to be very expensive for me to fix, but what upsets me the most is that if they’d done it properly in the first place then it wouldn’t have caused the knock on effect.

Whoever did this needs birching.

Driver’s footwell

Daylight visible through bad repair

Floor damage from standing water

Floor rusted into sills from water trapping

Passenger footwell.

 

Good luck in getting it properly sorted and fettled!

 

Whoever gave it an MoT pass needs a visit from DVSA.

Graham

 

It is very cleverly hidden, to the naked eye looking underneath you wouldn’t know. It’s been covered with stone chip under seal which hides the fibreglass extremely well. As MOT testers don’t lift carpets and they aren’t allowed to bash undersides any more then that would explain why it wasn’t found on an MOT.

Under seal is one of those things that is essentially meant to be used for good but ultimately it’s often used for bad purposes like in this case.

 

I had to weld exactly same spot on my car couple of years ago. Both driver and passenger side were rusty. Rust did not show from underneath at all. Car had factory stonechip coating and slight aftermarket layer of coating. Rust was not visible at all from the underneath at all. From inside there wre only very small spot of rust. All of the rust was under the factory seam sealer. Lightweight pointed hammer went straight trough the floor.
Floors were from factory. No one had been fettling before me.

 

My XJR was rotten there when I got it too. It's heritage as I believe the original XJs rotted there too, as have all models in between (my XJ40 sure did).

 

There is nothing worse than discovering rust where you don't expect it.
In my personal experience, I have found it very difficult to remove in a way
that it does not return later. The problem for me was even after removing
all the visible rust from a 40+ year old hood and treating it, patching it and
painting it, Mr. Rust would still come calling.

 

It’s not necessarily the rust that bothers me, it’s the way in which it was hidden. If they’d put half as much effort into fixing it properly as they did into bodging it then it may not have been as bad.

A lot of the other stuff on the floor is staining and I’m sure it will clean up, but IF my welding guy does fix it I’ll be treating the whole floor and inner sills with treatments. I had high hopes for this car, but at the moment it’s hanging in the balance as to wether it’s going to make it.