Hello all, sorry if this was already covered, but my searches show nothing. I have a low mile SA that has what appears to be undercoat all over the engine compartment. Was this factory applied? I have seen other cars that show similar, so I think that may be the case.

I like a nice clean engine bay, but I don't want to harm the car in any way. Has anyone removed this? If so, how is it best done? Are there any bad long term effects of removing it? I don't expect to drive the car in bad weather, so future corrosion should not be an issue.

Any help will be appreciated

Thank you

Rich

 

It is not factory, its aftermarket, several different brands were used back in the day, I believe Zebart was one? Not sure.

A friend of mine bought a 83 with similar undercoating applied all over the engine bay and a aircraft mechanic suggested a citrus based cleaner that did a wonderful job of disolving / softening it. They cleaned their engine bay and it looks brand new, I could'nt believe how good it looks.

 

Send " rgould " a pm and ask him the brand name.

 

To do it right, just be prepared to pull everything away from the inner fender surfaces - but as said, the good news is if you do it right, the paint underneath should look like the day it came out of the factory paint booth. Good luck - worth the effort!

Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

 

count yourself lucky, the "Rusty Jones" treatment was not cheap!

 

Thank you for all your input. Yes indeed. This car was fully and professionally undercoated. My good friend used to do that for a living. His company was called Ultra Seal. I remember watching him do it. They had wands and drilled small holes for access.
At any rate, who ever did under the hood really went crazy with it. Maybe he was trying to use up the last bit of his material. The body is amazingly rust free and it has all original paint. The clock shows 29000 miles and the paperwork and original owner say that is correct.

I sort of feel bad for the original owner, as he held the car almost 36 years. Why part with it today?

So, I am now on a mission to make it sparkle the best it can!!!

I will check back, and find the citrus based cleaner to use. Maybe if I create a discipline to do a small area each day, I may finish in a month or so. Even the electrical boxes on the fender wells have goop on them!! Hopefully they too look beautiful when cleaned.

I will try to post pix tonight of my original ( except present 14" wheels which I am going back to the originals) 79SA. It is a later one ( I think) with a build date of 2-79.

Pix later, please be patient with me as I attempt to make this car as nice as I remember it when I was a kid.

Thanks again for the help

Rich

 

it was all over the engine compartment on mine as well,

we used citrus cleaner and the soap impregnated SOS pads (it did not scratch the paint), with lots of hot water, and we used the whole box, it was a lot of work to scrub that crap off, we had the motor out and had a pressure washer that helped a ton, but the results were amazing,
as said above, it looked like the day it rolled off the assembly line!

 

I have had excellent luck fist using a variety of small plastic scrapers to scrape off as much as possible given that you can access the area. get a flexible scraper and it will conform to surfaces to the point where 95% of it comes right off.

Then use whatever cleaner you find works the best.

On my car the coating was so thick and sticky that it would have been a nightmare to clean without first mechanically scraping most of it off.

 

I used paint thinner on mine. Put in pump spray bottle to soften then scrape with plastic scraper good wipe down.

 

Penetrating oil melts the stuff right off.

 

Again, thanks for all the great ideas. Penetrating oil? Do you mean like PB Blaster? Or JB80 or liquid wrench? Or whatever? If you have an exact brand, that would be excellent.

I have been playing with this a little each day. At this rate, it will be cleaned up sometime near Christmas. It really is a messy project. I have been trying plastic razor blades, tar and bug remover, small plastic brush, citrus cleaner ( may be too harsh on the paint)

So I didn't yet try citrus and water and a soapy brillo pad, but I would think that brillo which is steel wool would be a little hard on the paint, which is what I want to protect and make look nice.

I will eventually get there if I don't lose focus on this. I have a lot of small projects set for this car. The underhood appearance is more of a want than a need, but I do like my machines to look clean.

Thanks again

Rich

 

Gasoline worked on mine.

 

Whatever you got, although the more aromatic/less oily the better. PB works but lighter less oily products work better. They tend to be a lot more expensive though.

The idea is that the stuff was applied as a liquid and aromatics in the liquid boil/evaporate off, leaving the goo behind. So you want to apply new aromatics to re-liquefy it. Using penetrating oil helps, i think, because the oil part of penetrating oil keeps it from adhering back to the paint. But first you need to re-liquefy it.

It's also magic on tape residue, like duct tape goo. Even if it was baked in for months, penetrating oil just melts the stuff.

 

Hello again all and thanks for the replies.

Elwood, I am afraid I have become too much of a sissy these days to use straight gas as a cleaner.
I have tempted fate myself, but have seen too many others lose. I can write some ugly and chilling stories.

Anyway here are the pix. I am in my very beginning stages, and basically want to show the contrast.

The electronic boxes on the driver side, including the regulator were completely covered in tar!!!!

WD 40 is king for this type of undercoat!!!

 

Holy crap, I've never seen anything like that before. I thought you were talking about a little over spray in the bay. Good luck, I feel for you.

 

Mine is at least that bad! My dad who owned the car from day 1 always reminds me that he had the whole car coated twice cause he never wanted it to rust. Never got the inspiration to remove it.....yet

 

If its any consolation, I would rather be coping with removing that than repairing rust!!

I just had to buy a donor car because of the damn stuff!