A few weeks ago I finally broke down cleaned the underbody up. It was a pretty bad combo of half oil soaked and melting undercoat, rock hard undercoat, rust, and grease. Took the better part of three weekends just to get all that crap cleaned up. While I was doing that I also dropped the trans to clean above that, and dropped the rear for cleaning and a gear swap.

The paint on everything is eastwood rust encapsulator. Looks good and seems to work great so far. Only downside was the price, at $100 for a gallon.

Oddly enough, my driver's floorpan was perfect and the passenger was rusty. Took a couple patches approx 6x6, and one about 10x10. Not to bad for a 17 year old Illinois car I suppose.

Here's a before:

 

And an after. Looking at that pic reminds me that I have alot of hand prints to clean up too

 

nice job dude

 

looks damn good

 

Thanks

 

small peice of advice though, when you have the rear wheels up in the air like that, chalk the front tires, i've seen 3 cars roll off and onto people who did it like that

 

Gee man... it's really inspiring the work you did on the bottom of your car!!!

And to think I've been putting off a pressure wash (sinde my car is pretty good underneath, still the factory finish visible) and painting the welds on my recently installed subframe connectors... shame on me!! I'll start tomorrow!

But as someone said, I'd definitely chock those front wheels!

 

Very nice! :hail:

 

Thanks guys

A pressure wash before you start would definately be a good thing, probably save some mess.


I chock the wheels while I'm raising it up, and after it's on the stands I give it a really good shake. With those 4 ton stands right under the rear and positioned in the stand cradles like that it's very solid. Thanks for the thought though

 

And I forgot to mention that it's MUCH more pleasant to work on now. I can actually go under the car clean, and roll back out without being black and caked with who knows what. I give being clean two thumbs up

 

I'll be doing the same thing VERY soon to my ride, the underside is so nasty compared to my old car

 

Awesome job dude, thats the stuff I like to see.

I will be doing the same to my car this winter, I already did it once...but I have to do it again for my own peice of mind.

 

It's alright, it's a healthy obsession

You did a nice job on those rims, BTW. I think thats the only set of rims that style that I actually like.

 

how did u do that? im gonna do that to the lancer when i get it because i want it to be pretty, but i kno someone is gonan ask, what chemicals and stuff did u use?

 

Nice looking exhaust too.

Real sweet.

 

From what I've been told, once the undercoat gets rock hard there aren't any chemicals that will take it off. I used a propane torch and a heavy gauge scraper for the hard stuff, the soft stuff just scrapes off. Once I get the bulk of it gone, I used laquer thinner, rags, scrapers, putty knives, razor blades, wire brushes, or anything that would work. The undercoating is easy to put on, but it's a pain in the *** to remove. Once The majority of that small stuff was gone, I used a cone shape twisted wire wheel to remove the tiny bit of undercoating I couldn't get, and the rust. If you try and take the easy way out with the wire wheel first, all it will do is melt and spread it. Ask me how I know

The paint is eastwood rust encapsulator. Different mags have rated it on a level playing field with POR15, or better. Depending on the application and the mag doing the rating. I think price is about the same, IIRC.

Thanks again for the compliments

 

Great job. I've been meaning to get under mine and do the same thing but have been procrastinating; your pics were all the inspiration and motivation I needed

 

100% improvement, nice job.