Rust wasn’t bad at all, but not as clean as yours. About £300 in products and far too many hours stripping everything off (suspension, chassis braces, exhaust, bumpers etc etc). Just away to start putting the car back together. Been off the road for 5 months now. Will be ready for the winter
I did have a professional application of Lanoguard on my Jaguar F-Type and was £350, including removing arch liners etc. I would go with this option for your car. It doesn’t need any rust treatment, just protection.
Shop around on price/recommendation, but it’s much easier to prevent, than to have to resort to remedial action if rust takes hold.
The previous owner has given you a head start by virtue of how he/she has treated the car- best advice is to capitalise on that.
But do it now, especially as it’s your winter driver.
I got my 2010 car done in 2021…… on the advice of my mechanic. Mine has 63K on the clock now and does about 4-5K miles per annum. It is driven in winter, but selectively- depending on the weather. It is garaged.
He said your car is in great shape underneath - get it ‘under sealed’ NOW.
He took the car to someone he uses to do this work and had it steam-cleaned then dinitrol-ed underneath. £180. I assume this is what they charged him?
Looks good but it never hurts to top up with wax oil or similar. I also paint any slightly corroding part’s with old engine oil. Garages are not allowed to do this now as it’s not green. Many years ago I came across a guy with a Rover P6 3500 V8 he had oil sprayed it every year and it was mint with no rust. I still spray oil in box sections where under sealing can’t reach. Also my MX-5 is garaged over winter and only comes out on sunny days. These cars will be collectable in future as EVs take over.
I had my NC treated with Dinitrol at a garage when I first bought it, felt it was worth doing as I planned to keep the car.
In researching I came across an article on the Dinitrol site for treating a NC. (No longer there). I downloaded a copy back then if you want a look out of interest. Clearly the email reference is out of date as is the discount code the article quotes!
Download it here: https://swm.mx5oc.co.uk/docs/MX5-Dinitrol_Article.pdf
Hopefully you’ve made your decision on what to do, if not, I think the biggest thing to consider is whether you’re definitely keeping it long term. If you are, then the cost of having preventative treatment applied is minor in terms of your future fun and happiness with owning it. Personally speaking, I’ve had a fair few 5s and had most treated, but saw that outlay as a cost of ownership, and peace of mind whilst driving them all year round.
Just enjoy your car - it’s what they’re meant for.
Your car looks in very nice condition! Based on my brother’s NB, which was in a similar condition when he bought it in 2019, it will deteriate very quickly if you use it “as is” in salt etc. His rust repairs last year were something like 4.1/2K. My own NB was likewise in very good condition when I bought it (albeit not as nice as yours underneath) and required circa 2K rust repairs fairly quickly. I think some of it is unpreventable (on NBs anyway) as they rot inside out. FWIW I havent done anything to protect mine and will repair as and when required. This month’s HTST (arrived today!) has a feature on rust prevention - might be of interest.
Wow that’s a clean underside. I hope it’s the same on the inside bits. As ours is a daily and left outside the first thing we did was get it treated - about £800 at South West Rustproofing. They had it for 3 days and did a good job. Every year I check the underside and address any issues. As others have said, it’s just part of the ownership, especially if it’s a keeper.
Some good advice above but also lots of nonsense. I worked in technical sales in the steel industry after university so I picked up some knowledge. If steel is to rust it requires both moisture and oxygen, so short of galvanising which technically is a different issue altogether, rust prevention is all about putting a skin on the bare metal that will keep both those away. Might sound odd, but wet steel wont rust if there is no oxygen about, and bare steel wont rust if there is no moisture so you can stop rusting dead in its tracks with a non permiable coating. In reality a 10 year old car will have some rust present - my daughter once crashed her 6 month old Ford and when we took the plastic bumper off, there was rust already in the body seams. Obvious question is what coating to apply. The old style underseals were bad becaue whilst the formed a skin, as soon as some stone or whatever punctured the skin , rust would start and travel unseen between the remaining underseal and the car structure. Heavy waxes are a much better bet because they adhere to the metal without forming a skin. But dont forget the enclosed sections like cills because they arent seam welded and so will get moisture instide that takes forever to dry out. Inject waxes into the cills too. Finally take particular care where aluminium is in contact with steel because that forms a sort of battery and you get electolytic corrosion. I have no knowledg of whether dinitrol or waxoyl or other waxes are bets, but oils or thin waxes like ACF 50 are not what you want.
I’d expect the car will be worth at least 10% more when you come to sell it than an untreated car. Sounds like with your use case, it will be showing more signs of corrosion than now if you don’t have it treated.
I’m leaning towards no. The car is basically almost “as new” underneath so from what I’ve read online, if I keep it long term I don’t think I’d have issues until maybe 10 years from now, and if I have kept the car that long then I won’t mind paying to have taken down to bare metal, repaired and undersealed.
I feel that if I do it now I might just be doing it for the next guy that owns it, if I end up selling it in 2-3 years. And 1k is not a small sum for something that is not permanent and will.likely need attention down the line anyway, if it was 400-500 maybe I’d do it.
