Surface Rust - How to Take Care of It?
 

Hi Everyone,

I am very embarrassed to report that I discovered some flecks of rust inside the rear wheels of my 986 last week. I had the car lifted for an oil changed, and I removed the wheels to clean the suspension and apply Back to Black to the plastic. The front wheel wells are entirely plastic, however, the rear wheel wells are only partially plastic, and I found found some flecks of rust on the underbody on the upper wheel well on the outer side of the panel. I drive my car year round, including in the snow, and always rinse it thoroughly to remove salt, however the location makes sense, because it is a difficult location to clean without removing the wheels or using a long brush.

Two questions:
Where else should I check, that may not be getting cleaned properly?
What should I do to correct this? Sand and spray-on undercoating?

And I know I should move somewhere without snow, hoping to make that happen early next year! :cheers:

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It's hard for me to tell if that is really rust or just some of the paint/sealer chipped away. All of the steel is galvanized and supposed to resist rust. If it is in fact rust, there are various rust converters available and I would dab some of that on each of the spots to stop it before applying anything else over it. As for other places to look, I would say anywhere you can see under the car, under the edges of the door bottoms and the front and rear trunk edges. Also if you pull your front bumper and front fender wells to clean debris from your radiators and ductwork, look at all the metal that is exposed during that job.

The spots have a orange hue, but I was also not 100% sure it was rust when I first saw it. Anyway to verify if it is indeed rust? Thanks!

Not sure its rust but to answer your question, POR 15 is great at neutralizing rust and will dry black.

I use Naval Jelly, clean with an abrasive. You might want to seal with a paint or primer or better yet, use some truck bed paint if your not concerned with weight.

Being from New England, I've seen, and suffered many rust problems with various cars. I must state that the pics you posted don't appear to be rust.

I could be wrong, but if you're that concerned about it, I would suggest lightly grinding the offending area, cleaning it with denatured alcohol, and then spraying with truck bed paint, as suggested by a previous post.

Or just WD-40 the crap out of it.

Just sayin'..............

TO

Those spots look like you ran over something and it sprayed into the wheelwell . I would take a stiff bristle brush and soap/water and scrub the area and see if it comes off . If it is paint then obviously it won't come off with that solution . Bottom line it doesn't look like rust to me . You can go to any auto parts store and purchase rust converter , a liquid you brush onto rust . You know it is working when it converts to black in color . You can then paint/undercoat over it .

I was thinking about doing that, I will pickup some rust converter this week and see if it turns black when applied, if not I will just apply some undercoating. Thanks for all of the replies, I will report back on what I find out! :cheers:

Update:
I looked this again when I swapped my wheels out for the winter, and it no longer appeared orange, or looked like rust. I tested it with rust converter but it was inconclusive because the rust converter which is supposed to turn black is black out of the can. However, after much closer inspection, I think these are simply small chips in the undercoating, not rust. I will probably apply rust converter and undercoating in the spring to be safe.