How to PROPERLY Undercoat A Rusted Car or Truck. (Fluid Film Surface Shield, Woolwax)

[Music] [Laughter] so those of you that subscribe to the channel know that i do a lot with lanolin based undercoatings so fluid film surface shield wool wax products like that for the bottom of your car to keep them from rusting by far the most common question that i get out of anything on this channel is what do i do if my car has existing surface rust on it and i want to treat it with some sort of landline-based undercoating so that is what we're going to go over in this video if i sent you this video link with zero context that is why because the answer that you are looking for is somewhere in this video um this video is going to be very long and i apologize for it but one thing i am going to do for you guys is down at the bottom i'm going to put chapters so if you slide the little bar at the bottom of the screen it'll take you to different sections of the video where you may find the answer the question that you have so like i said if i send you this link with zero context that is why because the answer is in here somewhere so like i said this video is going to be long and it's going to be all-encompassing so we're going to go over why these products work what products you should use what products you shouldn't use how to spray these products the equipment you need to spray the products prep work you need to do the bottom of the car we're gonna go over a bunch of stuff in this video so with that i'm gonna bring you over the bench we're gonna get started okay so right off the bat what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a look at why rust occurs and how to prevent it i do not care who makes the product the way that you prevent rust is exactly the same way for every single product out on the market [Music] so with that in mind the way that rust actually occurs is there's oxygen in the air and moisture in the air which also has oxygen in it that interacts with bare metal and causes that bare metal to oxidize now there's other things out in the environment like salt brine things like that that exaggerate the oxidation process but fundamentally the way that you prevent metal from rusting is you create a barrier between the oxygen in the air and the bare metal so as long as the oxygen cannot get to the metal the metal will not rust period now traditionally the way people have stopped rust is with paint or rubberized undercoating the reason those products fail is very very simple so if you put down a barrier of paint or rubberized undercoating what ends up happening is one of two things first of all the product chips okay when it chips moisture gets behind the coating so that will allow moisture to get in behind the coating it will then chip somewhere else and somewhere else and somewhere else and suddenly the metal is gone behind the paint [Music] that is why traditional undercoating fails if the metal you're dealing with already has surface rust on it there is going to be moisture in the pores of the metal if there's moisture in the pores of the metal you have now just sealed in the moisture with paint so now you have an exaggerated oxidation process because now the metal can't dry out now in this situation instead of laying down paint if you were to put down lanolin or some sort of petroleum undercoating it will displace this moisture and keep that metal from rusting so it'll push that moisture that's in the metal to the outside of the coating and the metal will not rust the other nice thing about lanolin compared to traditional paint or rubberized undercoating is it will self heal so because the product stays liquid it will not chip crack or flake like paint will if it does chip from a rock chip it will heal itself to some degree now the next super common scenario that i get is people going i want to take my bare metal or my previously rusted vehicle and i'm going to coat it with 415 and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to take fluid film or surface shield or any sort of landlord product and go over top of that i'm not a big fan of doing this because when the poor 15 fails and it will fail at some point it will crack and peel it will take the fluid film with it and at this point it's the same thing i alluded to a second ago you have a direct path for moisture to get to the metal and at this point it's going to start peeling more and more and more and more so i'm not a big fan of using 415 because guys when it peels it's not a small peel lantern is not going to self-heal a three-inch peel of pour 15. the final point that i want to make about paint and rubberized undercoating is how do you coat an internal surface so if you were to take a truck frame and slice it down the center and look down the end of the frame how do you coat the inside of the frame because like i told you guys just a second ago you have to create a barrier between the metal and the oxygen in the air so you can paint the outside of the frame all day long but unless you paint the inside as well it isn't going to do you one bit of good because then it's just going to rust from the inside out so how you guys plan on painting pour 15 chassis saver rust-oleum rubberized undercoating how you guys plan on putting that on the inside of your frame i don't have the slightest idea with any of these landline products there are adapters to get inside your frame inside the doors inside the rocker panels things like that so you can coat the internal surfaces and the external surfaces and keep everything from rusting so the last thing i want to talk about here is going to be cosmoline personally i'm not a big fan of cosmoline simply because the overspray i cannot remove and spraying in my shop i really don't want you know my floors my walls my lift my toolbox all of my stuff coated in orange goo that i can't remove that is why i prefer the lanolin products in my environment the other reason that i do not like cosmoline is cosmoline is not very forgiving what i mean by that is this so this is my representation of a rocker panel and at the bottom of a rocker panel typically there's some sort of pinch weld where two pieces of metal are spot welded together and there is a very extremely small gap between those two panels if you take cosmoline and you spray it inside a rocker panel [Music] like so you have to be 100 percent certain that the cosmoline makes it through the pitch weld and out the bottom before it dries the reason i say that is because if the cosmoline does not come out the bottom and it dries and creates a bridge like this this pinch weld is going to rot out because there's no protection in there if you try to spray another lanolin product on top of this cosmoline it is simply going to sit on top of cosmoline and not go through it and protect that pinch well so the only thing that i really recommend on internal cavities is going to be some sort of lanolin or petroleum-based product any product that dries should not be used on internal cavities for this reason the last thing we got to talk about with cosmoline is putting cosmoline over top of rust so if you guys have ever sprayed cosmoline you know that it goes on extremely thin and the reason that matters is when you spray it over a textured surface like this like rust what's going to happen is the the cosmoline is going to end up down in the valleys of the rust and you may still have peaks of metal that are still exposed the air into the oxygen that these peaks will still rust so what you have to do is you have to do multiple coats of cosmoline to ensure that you have complete coverage of the rust so the film build that you get with cosmoline isn't nearly as thick as what you're going to get with lanolin but cosmoline is much more resistant to wash off than what lanolin is so like i said guys it's very unforgiving on an internal surfaces and over top of rust so the next thing i want to talk about real quick is going to be the products i'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about products because you guys have seen me talk about products at length at this point so much so that i have an entire playlist on my channel of me comparing different undercoatings to one another i've tested over 30 different coatings in two separate videos if you guys want to check those out i'll put a card up in the corner link in the description to those videos as well the big takeaway that you guys need to get out of this is this you have to think of each one of these products like motor oil what i mean by that is this you can run the quote unquote best motor oil there is out on the market some of them will last longer than others but still at some point you are going to have to change your motor oil if you don't it's going to turn to sludge i do not care what product or what motor oil you use it will break down these products are the exact same way what i am saying is your diligence in maintaining the coating that you put on the vehicle is gonna directly correlate with the results that you get so yes you can run the best product out on the market but if you spray it once every five years and ignore it your results are gonna be garbage just like if you ran the bus motor oil on the planet and change your oil every 50 000 miles your motor is probably not going to last that long it's the exact same concept another super common question that i get is the black version versus the clear version um there's a there's a bunch of people out there that like the black version there's a bunch of people out there like the clear version the only difference between the two products is the black version of each one of these products has graphite powder in it that's the only difference that's what gives it that black color so if you buy the clear version of surface shield add graphite powder to the surface shield mix it together it will then turn black just like the black version of wool wax just like the black version fluid film so i spray each one of these products out of a five gallon bucket they're available in gallon sizes as well as aerosol cans if you guys don't have access to compressed air next thing we're going to take a look at is going to be the tools that you're going to need to actually spray these products so to spray the one gallon five gallon size this is the gun i use uh this is the wool wax professional undercoating gun i wanna say it was around ninety dollars for this gun came with three bottles uh two extension hoses and a fan tip uh one of these extension hoses is like 360 so the end of this the end of this hose has like a fan edge on it so it'll fan out 360. so you run it inside the frame pull the trigger and then it pull it back and it'll coat the inside of a frame inside the rocker panel whenever you get it you know stuck inside it'll coat the inside of it as far as air requirements so that kind of depends on the product that you're shooting so if you're shooting surface shield surface shields a little bit thinner than wool wax for example so like surface shield i tend to spray it between 40 and 60 whereas wool wax i may spray it between 70 and 90. it just depends on the thickness of the product if the product is thin and the pressure is too high you'll know because what what ends up happening is you end up with a lot of overspray and it just sort of it lingers in the air rather than just being sprayed onto the car at that point so in that regard you'll know when to reduce the air pressure at the end of the day if the air pressure's too high or too low it's pretty obvious and you guys will know um as far as adjustments on the gun really the only thing you can do is thread the tips in and out further so if you thread the tip in further it reduces the amount of product that comes out if you extend it out it increases the amount of product that comes out so not really a whole lot to the gun i've had this gun for uh it'll be going on five years now i bet you i've sprayed close to 55 gallons you know a full 55 gallon drum worth of product through this gun i have absolutely zero regrets with this thing for 90 bucks does exactly what it's supposed to does exactly what it's supposed to do and i haven't had issues with it whatsoever so for those of you that don't have compressed air you're going to need to pick up aerosol cans now there are some stuff that go along with the aerosol cans uh obviously you know it comes with the the regular red straw but there's also inner cavity adapters for the aerosol cans so if you look if you run that inside the frame you can coat inside the frame inside the rockers just like you can with the regular undercoating gun one thing i will say is if you guys are going to spray surface shield if you're gonna spray surface shield you need to buy one of these adapters to make it work with their cans this is a graffiti adapter it's simply i don't have a surface shield can i use them all but it snaps on the top and then the regular it'll just sit on there just like that so the if you're using surface shield you got to use that adapter to go from the can to the inner cavity adapter goes right on top of the can just like that so that's only for surface shield those either using wool wax or fluid film you won't need this adapter goes right on top no problem so this is the car that we are going to be coding in this video this is a 2008 honda civic it spent its entire life in western pennsylvania and northeastern ohio i think it has like 135 000 miles on it and it's pretty typical of what you're gonna find in this climate of this year on of this vintage so i'll take you guys around and show you it's not perfect by any means there is some definite rust that is formed on the bottom of this car but it's definitely worth saving you know all the major structural components of the car are still in really good shape and you want to keep those major structural components from basically rotting away so next thing we're going to talk about is going to be prep and prep tools what we have to do to the bottom of the car before we spray it to make sure that the product works the way it's supposed to so this is all the stuff that i'm going to be using to prep the bottom of this civic now this over here guys i'm probably not even gonna use this but what this is is this is a surface um basically a surface prep tool so it has a giant wire drum on it that spins you hold it to the bottom of the car you know basically the rust and it'll strip it right down to bare metal in about two seconds unfortunately as as you guys can see this thing is rather bulky and you can't get it in a lot of different places that you need to go this was relatively cheap i think it's like 85 bucks but unfortunately the drums the replacement drums like this replacement wire wheel i have on this one it's like 55 bucks just for the drum so it's not a cheap solution um but if you guys are doing like pickup trucks like the sides of a frame that you can see sure you could get something like this in there um being that i'm working on this compact car there are a lot of places i can use this so therefore i'm not going to 90 percent of what you guys need is gonna be just a freaking wire brush it's not a whole lot of prep required and all we're gonna do is we're just gonna loosen up any existing rust scale that's on the vehicle and then we're gonna spray over top of it you guys can't afford a wire brush use a hammer just tap the the loose surface rust knock any loose rust scale off with the hammer and then spray it a hammer if you guys don't have a hammer and can't afford a hammer you can always use a screwdriver and just jab it scrape it do what you need to do so if you guys can't afford a screwdriver you've got bigger problems than uh spraying some undercoat so any loose rust that you guys have on the bottom of the vehicle needs to be removed so let's say for example all of this rust on these gas tank straps if i just spray over the top of this stuff and then this stuff just falls off as you guys see it's going to take the coating with it so what you guys want to do like i said i'm using a wire brush just because it's going to be my access isn't that good and this is going to be the smallest tool that's going to make the biggest difference so take your wire brush your tool of choice and you want to knock all that loose garbage off the top of whatever you're working with so now at this point that piece of metal is ready to coat so you need to do this to the entire undercarriage any spot that has loose flaky rust you need to go through and remove it so this is probably going to be the most time consuming part of the entire process so as you're doing this you need to remember that the product that you were going to spray needs to be in contact with the good metal for it to work correctly so if you have loose bubbling paint flaky rust anything like that on the bottom of the car that stuff needs to come off the product needs to get in contact with the metal for it to work correctly so that is all the loose rust guys that i got off the bottom of this car uh taking a look over here you know all the all the rust that's on the vehicle is welded well adhered to the metal so the best tools to use on a compa on a compact car like this is just going to be a regular old flat blade screwdriver and a wire brush nothing exotic if you have large flat surfaces like a truck frame or something like that yeah you could probably get into that surface finisher that i showed you but a wire brush and a screwdriver will get you about 90 of the way of where you need to go so this is what everything looks like i'm going to go ahead and show you guys how to spray so once you have all the loose rust scale removed the next thing you need to do is go over to the rocker panels and try to remove i wouldn't say every single one of these plugs but like every second or third one so get a pry tool or a screwdriver and just pop out the the plug and what that'll do is that'll give you access to put that inner cavity wand up inside that hole and then you can coat the inside of that rocker panel so go around remove any body plugs that you can remove in the bottom from the bottom of the car that you intend on spraying inside before you start spraying now as far as spraying the product the way that i do it is i start with the internal cavity sprayer i start at the front work my way to the back of the vehicle and i go inside every hole that i can find with the internal cavity sprayer spray all the internal cavities that i can if it's a pickup truck i make sure i hit you know the tops of the bedsides and things like that above the wheel wells and then once i have all that done from the front to the back i'll then put on the fan tip and start at the front again work my way toward the back with the fan tip and just spray the the whole chassis of the car um the easiest way to tell when you're using the fan tip where you got it as opposed to where it's still dry is where it's wet it'll have a gloss to it and where it's dry it'll have like a matte or like a standard finish to it so you want the whole surface of the bottom of the car to basically look glossy and that'll tell you whether or not you have good coverage or not as far as the quantity is required obviously it depends on the size of the car you're dealing with and how rusty it is so the more rust that's on the bottom of the car that is more texture for uh the product to actually grab onto so typically the cars that are rustier i actually use more product than the cars that are newer because the cars that are newer don't have that texture and therefore they can't take as much product without it running and just falling off so for this civic i use just over a quart typical like half ton truck i'll use two to three quarts uh three quarter one ton stuff i'll use typically three to four quarts on something that size so uh like a small car small suv something like that quart quart and a half be plenty for what you need to do one area you want to pay particular attention to is going to be behind the rear wheels just above these rear wheel wells i don't care what kind of car you're driving or what kind of vehicle you're driving it seems like this is the number one area for exterior rust on a vehicle so this little honda down here on the bottom yep it's the paint's already starting to pop so the way that you treat this area is what you're gonna do is one of two things first of all either take out the tail light if you're working on an suv typically you'll pull the tail light out there'll be a hole behind the tail light that you can then stick that inner cavity on and reach all the way up in here spray inside this area and then treat it from the inside on a car like this what you have to do is you have to take the interior out of the trunk and once you have the interior out of the trunk then you have access again to the panel inside this this wheel well so it doesn't matter if you're working on a car suv or a truck it seems like the rear wheel wells always rust out in some sort of area whether it's up here in the front or up on the top or just behind this area for whatever reason doesn't matter what kind of car you're driving they'd love to rot out so this is what everything looks like underneath as you can see like the fuel tank straps are thoroughly coated and like i told you guys the beginning of the video any moisture that's on those fuel tank straps is going to get displaced by the lanolin itself the lanolin will take the place of the moisture and then create a barrier to keep it from rusting so what you guys may find if you do this to your own car is you may have to come back in a couple weeks because what will happen is any spots where you did not remove any of the loose rust scale what will happen is it'll loosen the lanolin itself will loosen the rust scale and it'll be super easy to then pop it off so you may have to go back in a week or two and just kind of go over everything one more time give it another scraping give it another coating but as long as you guys keep up with this coating the rust on the vehicle will not get any worse so like i told you guys earlier in the video your diligence in applying this stuff and keeping up with it is directly related to how it will perform so ultimately it's your guys's call how well this stuff is gonna perform because it's really up to how well you apply it so as far as other like common questions that i get about you know these landline undercoats is gm wax frames for those of you that aren't aware gm on their full-size trucks use a wax coating on their frames rather than paint and people wonder about the compatibility issues between the the lanolin and the wax whether it's going to make the wax fall off the frame or not here's my thought on it personally i haven't had any major issues with it but i will say this show me a gm wax frame that has spent five years up north somewhere in the salt belt that isn't falling off on its own without any lay-on on it so my thought is it's gonna fall off regardless whether or not you put lanolin on it or not the wax dries out it falls off the frame the frame rusts anyway so to me there's no downside to putting lanolin on it because it's gonna fall off anyway guys do i mask anything off on the bottom of the car no i've had absolutely zero issues with any sort of rubber parts on the bottom of a car the only place that i have seen any sort of rubber deterioration after five years was weather stripping um i've had no issues with bushings nothing with brake hoses nothing with like cv boots or ball joint boots tie rod boots nothing like that has swollen or degraded whatsoever the only thing that i do not spray on the bottom of the car is going to be the exhaust simply because it's going to burn off when it heats up and it's going to smoke until it's completely burned off do i wash the bottom of car absolutely not what i do is i literally spray the bottom of the car and ignore it for an entire year until i come back and spray it again i do nothing with it i have people that i spray for that they go through car washes i tell them just not to get the undercarriage wash and they have literally zero problems their vehicles look just as good as mine do i know some of you guys out there are probably going well you know i want to get all that salt and everything off the bottom of my car i don't want it sitting there all year first of all any salt that ends up on the bottom of your car doesn't contact the metal therefore the metal cannot rust because like we talked about earlier in the video you have a coating between the metal and the salt so the salt sits on top of the coating never touches the metal therefore the metal cannot rust next thing is when you drive in the rain that salt is going to wash off it'll wash right off the coating so i typically spray my vehicles in the fall so come january when it's hit with salt it goes through the entire summer driving through rain by the time it gets to fall there's nothing is on the bottom of the vehicle as far as salt is concerned and that is when i spray it again i've never had any issues so those are the those are the common questions that i get guys if you guys have any other questions put them down below final thing is guys i will have links down in the description to all the products to all the tools that i used in this video um as always guys if you guys like the video hit like you want to see more content go on hit subscribe thanks for watching guys [Music] you

Channel: Repair Geek

Views: 2,261,512

Keywords: fluid film, how to stop rust, rust prevention, rust repair, rust removal, woolwax, surface shield, undercoating a car, undercoating truck, rust proof, prevent rust, does fluid film work, how to spray your car with fluid film, oil undercoating review, undercoating, best undercoating, lanolin undercoating, oil undercoating, undercoating a truck, rust protection, woolwax vs fluid film, undercoating spray, how to undercoat a car, how to, properly, car, truck, rust proofing, salt

Id: WZr4qoKGfXs

Length: 27min 54sec (1674 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2022