My 53 plate is getting a little old now and they are prone to rust, I plan on keeping the car for a while and try to keep on top of it in terms of keeping it clean and protected but I have never cleaned it underneath so thinking about getting it undersealed before the winter.

 

I have a few rust spots on the rear quarter and on the edge of the arch on one side of the car where I also happen to have a scuff which is due to be sorted out and resprayed, so I can get the rust treated at the same time.

Crikey this is a bit of a sensible post lol.

 

I think they are pretty well sealed but I suppose getting to 10 yrs+ you can start to get cracks in the original underbody seal I suppose. Mine still looks pretty good to be honest and I have probably a 10-20 year old tin somewhere lol.

 

Would probably be better suited to the old MGF ( 2002 ish) I've been promised

 

To be honest I reckon either the car will fail somewhere else in an expensive way before the body seal every is likely to be a problem. Touch wood though.

Crack on, why not.

I think that beefing up the general underbody corrosion protection is becoming a fashionable activity for DIYers and not just Waxoyl trying to stir up a bit of business. Initially cars rusted too much, then adequate levels of underbody protection were added at factory, then less and only at specific areas prone to gathering dirt/moisture.

 

I certainly found that my wife's previous 2002 Polo was beginning to show signs of wanting/needing some help with resisting rusting underneath, as did my old 2000 Passat, though to a far lesser degree.

Won't hurt it

Cavity wax is probably more important though,as most serious rot on cars comes from moisture inside box sections/arches etc that you can't see.

There are loads of cavity waxes now that out perform waxoyl easily,Dinitrol or Bilt Hamber offer some really good ones

Come to think about it I was just posting about applying "stuff" on the outer exposed areas, I used to add Waxoyl to Holts (or Tetraseal) basic underseal to make it more interesting - then Waxoyl starting selling that sort of mix of thing. Dinitrol, yes, I've used that for coating inside closed sections, the beauty of Dinitrol is that you don't need to heat it up to high temperatures to get it to spray well inside closed sections.

I think that I took ownership of our slow cooker when that went out of fashion in the 80's - to keep it for heating Waxoyl up - but somehow cars started getting better underbody protection so I shelved the yearly/two yearly task of Waxoyling!

Edited 1 November, 20169 yr by rum4mo

Thank you for the replies and advice, definitely a great help, i'm going to go through with it

I had a corsa gsi a couple of years ago and that was undersealed early on in its life. It was in very good condition for the age. 20years old. So when I do get a Fabia vrs it's something that i will definatly be Doing. I just used waxoyl when I did my gsi. Very messy but worth it.

Every summer i do the sills, i just use Kurust, and paint over with hammerite:

http://www.halfords.com/motoring/paints-body-repair/rust-removal-treatment/hammerite-kurust-250ml

http://www.homebase.co.uk/en/homebaseuk/hammerite-direct-to-rust-metal-paint---250ml-582141

A couple of years back I removed my rear arch covers, you should have seen the collection of muck and crap built up so I wiped and cleaned them out, I found that some spot welds that had started to rust so I used a wire brush attachment on my drill and set about rubbing down to bare metal then I applied some grey primer allowing to dry then applied smooth black hammerite x2 coats, think I'll check them this weekend see if they need another coat, I removed the covers as I had 205/55/16 winter tyres and it rubbed on the near side arch when cornering. Always worth that little extra protection in places where moist and stuff can build up over the years.

Done the rear arches again on the weekend, painted them both this time, I had some patches again of rust so cleaned them up and covered with black hammerite it's easier when up on axle stands.