for example, so far i’ve read brakes, exhaust and heat shield above black box. i’ve attached the jacking points handy helper loads of people use because i am no expert, clearly. if you name a part that isn’t so well known, you can just say its next to … eg lower control arm, which i do know about.
also, i’m not 100% certain which product i’m going with yet. so, i apologise but i can’t say definitely, except it won’t be a bitumen one.
thanks
to be honest you need to be a nutter to do it yourself = one who loves getting mucky. Hope you have a garage. To do properly some/many say that you MUST scrape off ALL of the underseal, treat with a rust preventer after you have scraped off any rust BEFORE you even think about adding Dinitrol or - heaven forbid - a lanolin based product. That’s my 2 penneth worth.
I try to avoid exhaust and brakes but dont worry too much about where else it goes, thats about it really. A bit on the heat shields wont hurt.
You can paint everything underneath except parts that move. Avoid also coating the diff, engine and gearbox, drive shafts and rubber gaiters, alignment adjust bolts. Obviously not wheels, brakes exhausts and heat shields.
I removed the back box and heat shield there to get to the boot floor better, mine was only riveted on.
If you’ve got the energy, are fit enough and the tools etc then crack on. I’d do it again even now at 71 years old but I think my body would tell me different once I’m under there nowadays😆
Whats wrong with lanolin based products ?
some say that they need to be reapplied yearly and are not as good as Dinitrol or other alternatives . . .
i understand you were trying to be helpful and you weren’t to know how far along i was already, so i genuinely thank you for your reply, but you’re not really telling me anything i didn’t know about preparation, already being well into the preparation. i was at the garage when it was done previously and didn’t see anything off-putting. i don’t particularly enjoy the process of taking off the previous underseal and rust, but i do enjoy looking at it afterwards.
the articles you provide links for in your other posts about undersealing i find very interesting, so i’m grateful to you for those.
there are a couple of folx on here i’m aware of that have posted basically encyclopaedic-level how-to guides on another forum, which are so thorough i’d love to have them in book form. why would they do that if not to help the non-professional who can’t or doesn’t want to go to a garage.
in view of the amount of non-professional car folx on here who have done this themselves, sometimes through necessity, sometimes not, perhaps several times over decades of car ownership, and are very glad they did, maybe you might want to reconsider the nutter thing.
Lanoguard gets mostly slated online as not being very durable and needs to be re applied regularly, I have not tried it personally.
They market it well though!
The leaders for me in this sector are Bilt Hamber and Dinitrol, I have also bought other stuff from this site previously.
I forgot to say in my post, I used Dinitrol black underseal everywhere. Before the actual coating I ground back any corrosion where I could to bare metal.
Rust converters are usually a painted on liquid that turn rust to a purple colour, let dry and if you want apply a zinc primer first to those areas or apply the Dinitrol straight on.
Some say those stop rust applications are not actually going to stop it, maybe just slow it down, which is correct. You’ll need to check the parts you’ve treated annually and treat again if you find rust poking through again.
I’ve had to do the above before, only in certain areas.
And just an observation that I’ve found, talking NC’s here. You won’t have to cover the whole of the car underneath in underseal, pick the areas that are prone to rust and treat those. They are covered in underseal from factory, just not very well in certain areas or not at all. I’d say look at everything underneath from the door B pillar backwards for bad corrosion/rot but also along each sill rear to front. Cross braces too can corrode anywhere on the car, some of these are hefty pieces of metal though, it maybe what they’re fixed to that corroded too.
Im taking my NC to The MX Restorer in Eastbourne to be rust proofed.
Thought that was the most sensible and less messy route!
no problem. I did mine at home and will never do it again. I’m the nutter. seriously though, it looks like you have it all in hand. Some people think that a squirt of stuff on top of everything does the job. As you know, it may look good but . . . . .
They do need to be applied annually ideally but after the initial application it is just a top up which is both quick and easy to do.
I had mine done by Rustbuster in Lincolnshire, they did an excellent job of removing all the old crud and rust, inspecting, applying a rust convertor before spraying two different types of wax, one for the cavities and a thicker more durable one for exposed areas. Underneath it looks great and I am confident my car is protected.
