Yeah, I hate under coating. There is none whatever on my suspension, x-member and the whole underside of my engine bay. I hate rust more however.

How does powder coated galvanized or nickel plated steel hold up to salt? Any alternatives to undercoating that work well to rust proof a car and don't stay all gooey and disgusting? Before, my car had the perfect setup...non leaky windshield, really leaky motor, really leaky steering rack, really leaky M46, really leaky dana 30 and plenty of original undercoating left with the volvo self preserving "hot oil" undercoating from said leaky devices.

Oh, and building a suspension that works decently well together takes foreeeeeeeever....even if it is low dollar. So many hours spent baking the undercoating off in the dishwasher and scraping it into a pile. Then I throw it in the "chem dip" carb cleaner bin to get the last bits off. Then drilling and tapping all those holes. And I still have to box the a-arms, trailing arms and reinforce the torque rods....ugggh. Still, if I never ever have to touch bushings or repair the hard parts ever again, I'll be in heaven. Even if I scrap my sunroof shell for a non-sunroof one.

I can't comment on powdercoat standing up to salt, personally. I know that pretty much nothing does stand up to it forever.

Athal used to bathe his car in oil when he lived in Ontario. Apparently there were services that would do that. I know a guy who keeps his oil change oil and sprays down his car (underside, plus inside the doors and sills through holes he drilled and plugs up afterwards) and parks it in the back alley for the day. The oil in the back alley keeps the dust down, as a side benefit. The thing was a Hyundai Pony (you yanks never got 'em, James, but you may have seen one or two) and it didn't have a SPOT of rust on it when he finally got rid of it a few years ago! Those things were pretty bad for rust...

Of course, between the slimy oil and the dust that collects in it, you end up with a pretty sloppy mess after a while. Better than undercoat, which only really gets into the visible spots and doesn't do much to protect the areas you can't wash out, and doesn't do a thing for protecting bolt threads.

yep. the rust protector basically squirted oil everywhere....leaving you with trails of icky oil runnin down the door frames and everywhere else for a while...

For a while, VW sprayed heavy yellow wax all over the inner panels, both for sound deadening and for rust protection. On a hot day, you'd get trails of wax running out of the drain holes. Worked pretty well, though!

Volvo also used a wax treatment. My advice is to use 3M's super Shutz (or something like that - name escapes me). It's a very good undercoating and can be painted - it is not tar goop like the factory uses. You could treat the entire underside of the car to POR-15, it's pretty much bullet proof. Powder coat is very good - salt resistance is excellent. Ceramic coatings have the highest salt rating - may be a little expensive to have all your parts ceramic coated - but that sure would be pretty.

3M's Shutz is a gravel guard, though I suppose it would work as well as any undercoating for preventing rust and deadening sound. It still doesn't get up (and down) into those tricky areas any better, though, and you've still got to clean off all the bolts & cut bolted connections free when you're trying to take the car apart.

Picture the box channels that make up the "frame" of the car: how are you going to get inside there to protect that with a Shutz gun? You need a flexible wand with a 360* mist tip to get everywhere you need, and you need something pretty thin to flow through that.

The only thing I know that WORKS, aside from hot dip galvanizing, is an annual oil bath. It's messy, though.

The oil treatment would drip for about a day, not too bad. It was worth it being in Ontario, but nothing could save my beloved wagon from the cancer- it's back, bad as ever now. Probably be alot better had I brought it out here right after I had the paint and body work done but it had to see another couple of onscario winters first. I imagine a similar treatment would go alot longer in Calgary's climate.

Good to know.

Do nickel or cad plated fasteners hold up all that well? My control arms, cups and struts are already galvanized, actually. Being from a 1993 244. The ABS struts had a very mild almost waxy-like undercoat that was kinda runny, most of which came off in the dishwasher. Maybe I'll just Por-15 them and hope that holds up for possible future salt exposure.

My early torque rods and trailing arms are just panted with tons of undercoating that I had to heat and scrape off to get them to where I wanted so i can bead blast them.

Stuck rusty bolts bug me most. I'd rather the suspension bits have a bit of rust or that I repaint them once every few years. I don't mind undercoating on the actual car, but if I could keep the suspension easy to wash and take apart that would be nice.

only a day? good god, the corolla wept oil for over a week!

The stuff I used was specifically an undercoating, but it did dry like a rocker gaurd - we'll see how it holds up, but I've got no reason to suspect that it won't. You will need a flexible wand to get into all the areas and seal it up, that's how the pro's do it. If you drive the car, there is no real substitute for undercoating. The Ultra Shutz was like water, so it should work for spraying into tight areas. As long as you can't get water into an area easily, then you don't have to worry - use sprayable body wax (3M again) if you're unsure.

I've used POR-15 on my suspension and it shines and cleans up great after 2 years of use - powdercoat in a can. It (or something like it - water cured polyurethane) is the only way to do this cheap, and it is still 5 times the cost of undercoat. When I did my inner fender repair, I used POR on the inside of the box sections (they are 3 feet long) tape a brush to the end of a coat hanger and give it a good couple of coats - should last longer than the factory part (lasted 41 years) and had nothing inside.

My problem with the oil bath is that it is environmental terrorism - let's not be putting our used oil anywhere other than the recyclers. If you have to spend some money getting it done right, spend the cash. If your car is that important, and honestly they made lots, and rust repair isn't that hard, get it done correctly.

Thanks again everyone!
...things will only get sillier for undercoating removal and rustproofing reapplication it looks like.

But what happens to your undercoating when you recycle the car? It goes up into the atmosphere in a cloud of toxic fumes. A bit of dripping into a previously-dusty back alley isn't going to poison the planet any more than spraying one car full of undercoating and then melting it down in 10 years, but they both leave their impact, and in both cases it's a helluva lot less of an impact than actually DRIVING the car.

Good point Matt