Morris Minor Owners Club

I jacked up the front of car to check the brakes. I was shocked how grim the Inside wheel arch looked .Underseal peeling away, repaired panels rusting away.

What procedure would you do to add protection again.

Do I just by underseal and tosh it around!

Cheers

Zippy,

Underseal is a pet hate of mine and your problem illustrates my point.

It does nothing to prevent rusting (a trade colleague insists it speeds the process up and will not have the stuff in his workshop) it flakes off, is a pain when you need to do some repairs and it makes the underside of a car look ugly.

As mentioned in the previous thread, IMO you cannot beat a decent coat of paint (this of course once the metal is clean and rust free) by all means one of the rust killing paints such as POR15 (follow the instuctions for overpainting) or "Rust Bullet" - has anyone tried that one? or at least a zinc rich coating.

In areas prone to stones, a good quality stone chip finish should be applied next followed by a nice glossy top coat.

That way the bottom of your car looks nice, can be washed and kept clean and you can spot potential problems before they become serious.

If you want belt and braces the whole underside can be given one of the thick wax treatments - this isn't a once and forget it either, it needs to be checked periodically and re-applied.

Underseal is good for nothing except covering up problems. It is evil and should be banished from the face of the planet

I'm not sitting on the fence on this one

Yes, I too hate underseal. I used to use zinc primer then smoothrite, then waxoyl/dinitrol, but now use Zinc primer, Chassis black (much better and cheaper than hammerite/smoothrite) and a wax treatment.

If you want your car to last, spend a weekend with a hot air gun and scraper under your car and get rid of the horrid stuff- paint something decent underneath.

Yes, underseal must be the restorers biggest nightmare. That said, my car has been painted underneath, then a coat of the brown Dinitrol was applied. Still very waxy and flexible after 2 years.

Dinitrol is good stuff!

im wondering if to use waxoil etc after i finshed my project but im giving it a good coating of hammerite once its been de-ruseted.......do you think just hammerite would be good enough protection for the amount of salt etc on our roads?

flying wrote:......do you think just hammerite would be good enough protection for the amount of salt etc on our roads?

NO NO and Thrice NO!

Er No, Hammerite is a good decorative finish for iron work - put it on your wrought iron gates and it looks lovely.

But, Hammerite is not a particularly good paint for any other purpose and can in no way be considered rust protection!

If you must use Hammerite use it as a gloss coat but put a good primer underneath Finnegans (the makers of Hammerite) sell a zinc rich primer and this would give much better protection than Hammerite

Also never rely on one coat of Hammerite because by the nature of the paint the film is often porous.

All this said, conventional paint is far better for automotive applications

Waxoyl/Dinitrol would also help

In my opinion, Hammerite alone isn't enough to protect the underside of a car that's going to be used in the good old British weather. I'm going to apply Dinitrol 3125 followed by Dinitrol 4941 after I've finished de-rusting, priming, and Smoothriting the underside of my Traveller.

As I learnt from others on here, Chassis black paint is both a lot cheaper and better than Hammerite, being designed specifically for chassis protetcion purposes.

I got 5L from an automotive parts suppliers for £20.

You can get zinc rich primer from automotive paint suppliers.

But first - you must remove all traces of rust with wire brush (in hand or in leccy drill) and kill it with Kurust or similar - they nearly all rely on phosphoric acid - so make sure you wear rubber gloves and don't let it spalsh on your face or eyes!!

Unfortunately neither Wilkinsons nor my local auto factors stock anything called "chassis black." I suppose I should have gone looking to see if I could find it online before I spent a fortune on black smoothrite, but since I have it I might as well use it. I always put three coats on over a couple of coats of primer (either Hammerite anti-rust primer or red oxide) and it's worked pretty well for me in the past.

alex_holden wrote:Unfortunately neither Wilkinsons nor my local auto factors stock anything called "chassis black."

Alex, there is nothing fancy about chassis black, it is usually a no frills black synthetic paint - old fashioned paint, if you like.

Smoothrite is perfectly OK but is, as you suggest, much more expensive.

Try Jawel Paint, I use them regularly as I have a branch fairly local but they have an online shop.

I got my chassis black from my local Partco (or Brown Brothers)- they are all over the country.