Hello everybody.

First post! Been lurking here for years...

I recently took my daily to have some drivetrain work done and the shop was amazed at how much rust was on the underside of the car. I live in a coastal town, but apparently it was still, um, impressive.

What do people do to preserve their FDs in these kinds of climates? I've seen rust prevention aerosolized grease that I imagine you could periodically coat the underside of the car with. Anybody tried that?

 

The best thing I've found so far (after a little over 9 years of FD ownership) for keeping your FD rust free is a combination of jackstands, and a garage.

Put it in the garage, add jack stands, remove engine, and viola!! Your rust problem never occurs to begin with!!

 

I use butter.

Seems salt just attacks the car and it gets rusty.

 

Alot have had luck with POR-15

 

I've had good luck with rubberized undercoating, in your situation I would recommend power washing the underside first to remove any residual salt dirt etc. Then drive it for a day or 2 to let it completely dry. Before you start spraying the undercoating, spray the nooks and crannies with some light weight oil to let it kind of soak into the seams and other areas where metal may be overlapped. this is also a good time to pull plastic body plugs that lead into cavities like inside rocker panels, and spray oil and then undercoating into those areas and the underside after replacing the plugs. don't spray too much oil all over because it can make it harder for the undercoating to stick. basically undercoating works by keeping metal wet with oil. the top coat keeps the oil from getting washed off. if you have ever been in a junkyard that has really old cars, about the only area on the cars that isn't completely rusty is the crossmember under where the engine used to be, because it is covered with oily crud, then sat out in the open for 30 years, scrape off the crud and there is clean metal underneath. The last trick with undercoating is to renew it about once a year, touching up any spots where it may have gotten scraped off and spraying more lightweight oil on top of it all so that will soak through to the metal underneath.

 

Use Transmission fluid and put it in something you can spray it with and pressure wash the bottom and then spray repeat this 2-3 months