Hi,

Noticed some rust on my 03 on the underbody in two specific spots, the hole nearby to the front jack points on both the driver and passenger side...

Should I:
- leave it be
- fix it myself (what should I do/use, naval jelly, rust converter?)
- get it fixed up professionally

 

no opinions?

 

Damn. It's probably one of them things where you should get it fixed before it gets worst. Do you drive in the snow or bought the car from someone who did? It's common to get rusted up when driving in snow due to the salt added to the roads to help melt the snow.

 

What state you in. Rust converter works. Turns black then leave it

 

Any more opinions on this? After 15 years, 200k miles, and 10 New England winters, my subframe and underbody are showing some small areas of surface rust, similar to the OPs pics.

I was thinking: wire brush, then a rust converter? Or some oil based rust preventative? something I can brush on. I'm weary of hard rust coatings like POR-15 since moisture can get underneath, especially when only used locally. I don't mind doing a yearly application.

 

I have seen this on numerous cars of mine through the years. I take the wire brush wheel on the drill. remove as much surface rust as possible. clean with some solvent. Open your POR15 kit- prep solvent/POR etc. Follow all the instructions. After POR15 is painted on in 2-3 coats, let it dry. then hit it with 2-3 coats of rubberized rocker guard (i love the stuff). after that's all done, spray liberal amounts of Rust Check (canadian product) under there as well.

You can get POR online. It's some magical stuff.

I've used it extensively over the years. The canadian winters are not kind to our cars.

This is how awesome this process is- 88 gtx with 150K all season miles.


you do not need to have this fixed professionally. This is dead nuts easy, if a little messy and time consuming. No one will do it as good as you can for as cheaply.

good luck

darcy

 

I second Por15. Great product, little funny to use IMO. I got one of those paint cans to convert mine to a spray, hopefully easier than brush on like I did last 15 times on projects.

 

I've got rust in my trunk, specifically in the well. I think I'm going end up getting it proffesionally fixed since it goes through

 

rust is car cancer dude!!! get that shiet fixed immediately before it spreads to vital parts of the car and cost you an arm and a leg to repair. my friend had minor rust near the wheels and after a couple years, the had to change out the whole axle because they couldnt replace the part. that cost him over 10k, he ended up junking the car cause no body would buy it either..

 

Yeah, you can loose your car to the junk heep if you don't stay on top of the rust. Like you say in the wheel wells and the underside are the most common areas to find rust. When you are looking for used trucks or cars sometimes you can pick it up for a song when it has rust. Recently I purchased an s10 with rust on the bumper and some parts underneath. I got it cheap. Then I went to work, replaced the bumper because it was rusted through. The surface rust on the underside looked real bad but after inspecting it you can tell it was superficial. So all I did was paint mrochem.com blackstar rust converter on all of the top rust. Couple years later its still holding up under there. And that's saying something up here in the northeast!