Rocker panels shot

With winter fast approaching, I wanted to touch up some bare/rusting spots where the tires sandblasted the paint off of my '99'. One of those spots was the rear door dog leg area. The damage (rust) extended below the plastic rocker panel cover so I decided to remove it and do the job right - what a surprise I got! The steel rocker panels are all but gone - what a mess. I cut out what I could, cleaned up the rest, treated it w/ a rust treatment and painted. I couldn't use the original mounting holes for the plastic cover as they were gone. Luckily the plastic covers and car have matching holes drilled on the top end of the cover so I used them to re-attach. Hopefully it will last till I'm ready to get another car - at 181,000 she's still running strong.

The rest of the car looks great for its age so it was quite a shock to see all this damage, which has to be from all the dirt and moisture collecting under the cover. I don't know if all Intrigues had this cover but if yours does you might want to take a look - or not!

mine was the same way. Car looked great, but there was basically no metal under the plastic side skirts. Typical GM design, look at some of the earlier grand prix (97- on) and they all have notoriously rusty rockers. Its just a bad design, the only way it could have been avoided was if the rockers were soaked in oil when they were new...that never happens unfortunatly. Good thing for the plastic side skirts to hide the mess!! Not sure hoe much structural rigidity the rockers give to the W-body gm's, but be careful when it gets put on a hoist!

I'm also a little worried about the rigidity of the car but so far I haven't noticed any problems.

I wonder if the car never had the plastic skirts, would we be having these problems? This is why I don't like all the plastic cladding, mouldings, etc. that some mfgs. put on vehicles - just more areas for dirt, salt and moisture to collect.

I had that problem with a grand am I had it wasn't horribly bad but I got service turned down allot from the car being unsafe to lift due to that. Then when I had a problem with the car I couldn't have a shop fix it so I had to do allot of repairs myself That's when I decided it was time to get a new car. I'd take care of it before it becomes too much of an issue.