Seriously Effective E30 Rustproofing Options

[E30Kaiser]

Sounds like you should find a local pay-and-spray car wash, take your own bucket and rag, and do the washing there.

As for the POR, like someone else said it's great for the underside and areas you can't see, but aside from striping the car, treating it, and repainting it...it's not going to do much for the top side. Granted most of the time unless there is a break in the paint, the rust will surface from the back side of the panel anyway, you might be ok just treating under the car and the back sides of any exposed body metal.

They usually recycle the water there(at least in the US they do) so he would need to bring his own water too, or else he will just end up spraying off the salt with more salt water.

[TooSlowToCare]

You silly northern guys and your salt covered roads


I did not know that about recycling the water though. Makes sense.

[Mossman]

They usually recycle the water there(at least in the US they do) so he would need to bring his own water too, or else he will just end up spraying off the salt with more salt water.

I've never heard of recycling water. Obviously in drive through car washes the brushes will store some of the grit and salt from previous cars so that's a bad idea, especially in the winter...but recycled water? really?

[Eecen]

Yes some car washes will recycle their water. Makes some sense as you aren't wasting god knows how many liters of water...but not so great in the winter.

[TurboJake]

Prevent winter rust?
Don't drive in winter. It will rust more, regardless of how much you wash it, or how much you prepare. It WILL have more rust at the end of the season.

(Mudflaps help)

[nmlss2006]

I would assume they'd have RO filters to recycle the water with...

[Nick_S]

I got under mine and cleaned up a ton of dirt and grime and then bought a few cans of undercoating or even truck bed liner as it's pretty durable and coated any exposed sheet metal. On areas where there was light surface I wire wheeled it to bare metal and used some self etching primer, then coated. You can only do so much but a bit of prevention goes a long way.

[lgb240]

Nice winter beater, join the Souther Ontario 318is winter beater club.

After reading through your comments, here`s my suggestions:

- I wouldn`t use pour 15 for your application
- remove the inner plastic front fender wells, trunk liners, door cards, rear seat sides and go to Krown (or some place similar) to spray their product into all these cavities, as well as everywhere else they spray.
- on the rusty areas that have started, smear some grease or vasiline on them for the winter - this will hold the rust at bay indefinitely
- wash the car often
- don`t use a car cover
-get a glass moonroof !!- your steel sunroof probably aleady has rust inside if it isn`t showing on the surface yet, nothing else will prevent rust here
-Get a quarter jar started and use the local coin op car wash.

Here`s my dedicated winter beater of 6 years, while my Touring is in storage. It only gets driven in rain, snow and generally sh1tty conditions, has about 95% original paint (a few small rocker areas were touched up) The black paint hides a few dabs of grease over a couple of small rust spots that haven`t become any worse in 6 years. I should also mention that my 318is has NEVER seen the inside of a garage or a car cover for that matter- it has literally spent it`s entire life outside.

Your place sounds great by the way, I`m sure you can`t wait to get a big garage on the property.

Get 4 snows and enjoy your winter driving.

[Nick_V]

Was that car on Kijiji? I saw a 318is just like it on there a couple months ago and was going to go look at it, but the guy was asking way more than I wanted to spend on a beater. FWIW, if it IS the same car, that's not the original paint, so it may look mint but who knows what's going on underneath...

[Koen]

I have used a rust converter / underbody coating called caprotech RX on my car. It can be used on both clean and rusted steel and it basically penetrates the rust and isolates it from the steel.

First you apply a layer (or layers) of RX5 and after that has dried you can apply RX10 which is basically a stonechip-proof coating that bonds well with the RX5. RX10 is glossy and can be ordered in many colours, so it also looks pretty slick

I'm not sure if they'll ship overseas but I guess you could try contacting them. http://www.caprotech.nl/indexRX.php