Freestar rear seat latch recall
 

Well,

Just received my recall notice for the body rotting away around the rear seat anchors. I fixed mine myself last year after a trip to Arizona produced massive amounts of water onto my carpeting while driving thu some heavy rain. I thought our large cooler was leaking melted ice water until I started digging deaper into the van. The following pictures are of what I found and did to fix my issue. Guess I'll have to see how the actual repair/repair parts are installed and completed.

Here's the rest of my repair pictures. There's a total of 4 layers of fiberglass. 2 layers on the inside, 2 layers on the outside and tiger hair/kelvar mix sandwiched in the middle. Then I painted the inside area with 2 coats and the complete wheel well area with 4 coats of bed liner.

I guess if rusts anymore where you fixed it you'll be driving a fiberglass boat instead of a van haha. By the way I've never seen a boat on wheels before

Well...I guess if it gets hot while fishing, I could always roll the windows down...:)

That's one impressive repair job. It's literally better than new. Are you going to have the recall work done still?

One other observation after looking at all your pictures. Wow, the underside of your van is rusted to pieces. Isn't there a 10 year rust through/perforation warranty or something like that on our vans? Interesting comparison is that my 2004 Monterey is completely rust free underneath thanks to no salt in Georgia. Besides yearly trips to NY in the winter and an occasional salting here in N.Georgia my van hasn't been exposed to that level of salt damage. When I get back from NY I always wash the undercarriage ASAP.

Yes, but is only for 100,000 miles. It has to start from the inside outwards and not due to enviromental conditions. So here in western NY, my van gets exposed to about 4 months of massive salt and sandblasting from the grit they put down on the roads. The rear wheel well area is the only place that has any type of real rust on it. Actually, I've seen more 06' & 07' Freestars with more rus on it. than my 04' has.

This is one of the reasons our bought new MKZ is setting in Arizona...

As far as the recall goes...It will depends on what the actual repair consists of and how the brackets will be re-mounted. It appears that the rust was actually started where the plastic protector for the fuel filler makes contact with the wheel well. The passenger side was just starting (see enclosed pic). But there's no gard on that side. However, the rust also started from the coil spring seat and migrated upward. If you look at the picture "Seat Anchor 09", you will see that the body is gone from above the coil spring support (like this on both sides). This area is cosmetic only at this time.