Originally Posted by jlaw904

I was trying to find the source of these little bubbles on my rear tailgate:



After removing the interior panel, I could find the source. Obviously it has been fixed before:



I saw that and my heart sank. I spent so much time this year getting this 4Runner in perfect shape engine-wise and now I see this. It literally needs no other work done at this point. I saw the weather strip at the rear hatch window was completely disintegrated. I'm assuming that's what caused the issue before and allowed water to leak all down inside and after they fixed it they never replaced the strip so the issue came back or wasn't fixed properly.

Now I'm deciding what to do since I know it will just continue to spread:
- Have a body shop repair the job which I'm guessing will cost a small fortune. What do you think a job like this would cost?
- Chip it all off myself from the inside and smother it in Evaporust gel for a couple days then clean it and spray some rust inhibitor coating and then accept fate from there.
- Use it as an excuse to start looking for a 4WD with less miles lol

What would you do? This thing is in excellent condition otherwise for it's age.