DIY rust-proofing for salty winter driving?

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I've found a scruffy but really mechanically solid XR4ti around that I plan to use as a winter beater/rallycross car, I'm not paying much for it and I need a beater anyways, so I'll see just how much I like the XR4tis and decide if I'd rather get a nice one or an E30 or maybe something else entirely.

Anyways, as one of the main purposes of this car is going to be going 40MPH sideways down snowy industrial park roads late at night, I'd like to rustproof it as much as possible in the hopes of preserving it. What would you guys recommend? One of my buddies is just telling me to put it up on jack stands and carefully clean/paint the entire underside with POR-15, which would be pretty tedious but probably work well enough. Any other ideas/suggestions?

Learned some years ago that rustoleum rusty metal primer, cut about 50/50 with acetone, soaks into metal and such, and dries like iron. Cheap and darn effective on farm equipment. You could buy a gallon cheaply and go to town on the underside of the car with a cheap harbor freight spray gun.

Make sure the drain holes in the sills and doors are all open, wash the hell out of everything, scrape any rust that has started and treat it, look for poorly maintained versions of the same car and inspect the areas that the bad ones rusted, spray trouble areas with motor oil or some such every now and then, and most important, watch and deal with issues as soon as they crop up.

And black spray on undercoating only traps moisture on an older car.

I was gonna say spray it with rhinoliner, but that works too.

I have a 40 gallon drum of Texaco Bridge grease (thick as ice cream) I used thinned with varsol and cooked in a pot to mix. Run that through a suction fed harbor freight gun and off I go. It coats, dries hard and doesn't drip.. Impossible to get it off , so watch the windshields.

Ok... offtopic... but where in the world do you get a 40 gallon drum of BRIDGE grease?

cheaper, faster alternative, buy some duplicolor truck bed liner from local parts store, get 2-4 cans, around $8/can, 30 minutes, blam done. XR4s came undercoated from the factory, worst places are around door jamb under plastic cladding and behind side plastic cladding, goodluck

My old man has had it for as long as I have been alive (30 yrs) he said he originally bought it right from the texaco station for the purpose of rust proofing. It says right on it " Bridge and impliment grease"

Mud flaps front and rear are a huge help if they put grit down on your roads. one of our cars has ended up looking sand blasted from it.

If the metal is solid but just rusty scraping those bits and using an encapsulate like POR-15 should do the trick. If the metal is solid and no rust I would use a truck bed liner spray.

If it is already rusty just cut it out and weld in new stuff.

Years ago in Quebec, it was common practice to spray our cars with fuel oil every winter. We'd do the underside and the outside up to the windows. Come spring you would spend an entire saturday washing it off, but it worked pretty well.

mndsm wrote: Ok... offtopic... but where in the world do you get a 40 gallon drum of BRIDGE grease?

I find old stuff like this in airplane hangars when a company moves on or some old boy dies. Usually you can get it for free if you move it. A hangar in Manistee MI has alot of 30 year old new oil, and another has nice steel tubing for patching airframes.

They sell a product for boats that's basically a spray-on penetrating oil that dries to form a wax-like coating. The can I had was branded Mercury.

I'm cheap now, I just use all the old motor oil I've got around here & brush it on the problem areas.

You can make a homemade version of waxoyl.

The PB Blaster people make a spray on waxy product for preventing corrosion, my salt water fishing friends use it, but I have forgotten the name.

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MOVE OUT OF THE SALT BELT

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Grtechguy wrote: + + + + + MOVE OUT OF THE SALT BELT + + + +

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A pretty cheap alternative to the alternative is Rust Stop. It's an oil based undercoating instead of the rubberized ones that hold moisture in. It's got to be redone every year but it really does work. I was quoted $150 to get my car done. I'll let somebody else get covered in that crap for that much.

I also swear that in WNY the highway departments dump salt every day whether it's freezing out or not. I've seen them on sunny days out salting roads...with no snow in the forecast for days. Yet when there's a foot of snow in the road they're nowhere to be found. Get the overtime while it's easy. Your tax dollars at work...........rusting your car.

Regular visits to the car wash with the undercarriage spray. Worked on my 2000 ZX2SR.

Bababooey wrote: A pretty cheap alternative to the alternative is Rust Stop. It's an oil based undercoating instead of the rubberized ones that hold moisture in. It's got to be redone every year but it really does work. I was quoted $150 to get my car done. I'll let somebody else get covered in that crap for that much. I also swear that in WNY the highway departments dump salt every day whether it's freezing out or not. I've seen them on sunny days out salting roads...with no snow in the forecast for days. Yet when there's a foot of snow in the road they're nowhere to be found. Get the overtime while it's easy. Your tax dollars at work...........rusting your car. Ditto here in Ct. 1/4" of snow and a half inch of salt. A foot of snow, and the plows wait for it to stop snowing, so they can move it all at once--except for the interstates, for the most part. State and county roads, sit and watch. Side roads, break out the dog sled.

I bought a big jug of this: http://www.fluid-film.com/

And a $20 undercoating gun from the local surplus store and went to town. Sorta dries into a waxy kind of film. Didn't end up keeping the car i did with it but it looked like it would have held up well. Had a peculiar smell though that mostly went away but you could still smell it on hot days.

• Buy cheap car, add good snow tires
• Replace cheap car every other year

Knurled wrote: - Buy cheap car, add good snow tires - Replace cheap car every other year

that is my program, it works well. when the cheap car gets too ugly or i get sick of it i pick up a new one.

iceracer wrote: Regular visits to the car wash with the undercarriage spray. Worked on my 2000 ZX2SR.

You know I should have thought of this. My dad has a friend who works at a drive through car wash and runs it through probably once a week. His car is always clean, it is amazing.

But the most amazing part is that he had a Buick Park Ave Ultra with 250k miles. Every piece of that car had worn down but there was no rust when he scrapped it. Now he has an '01 Lincoln LS and same deal. The paint/metal is going to far out live the drive-train and electrical bits.

This may not be the cheapest option if you have to pay $10 a week but it sure does work.

I anybody needs a rust free 1995 Accord with an overheated motor for a body swap let me know. The car drives fine right now, just leave a trail of coolant out of the water pump. Its too good to just crush, but may end up parting it and scrapping the leftover.