Hi,

I plan to drive my 1994 XJS in the winter in NY. What's the best way to prevent rust?
Thanks.

 

 

Get it professionally Waxoyled or Dinitrolled or similar.
The other option is to buy a winter car and lay the XJS up; it may work out cheaper in the long run.

 

The body & floor might last a few NY winters, rust proofing or not. The IRS maybe two years, the felt seals won't hold the salty slush out either. The radius arm's might as well be "welded" to the sub frame. Some guys spray the under with oil. Don't know about that until you need something welded or apply heat to a frozen nut or drive down a few dusty roads. Best advice; "winter rat". Check out some back issues of Jaguar World Magazine .

 

Corrosion Manual.pdf This is a care manual for snow plows created by Montana State University, published by the Minnesota DOT.

The DMV also has recommendations: DMV.org

 

Lanolin................ It'll never rust. I use Lanox it's an Inox product. Where I live everything in my shed rusts in winter, nothing comes into my shed without being given the Lanox treatment.

I also spray both cars with it, smells like a shearing shed for a while, but it's cheap and it works. I have a dozen sheep in the back yard and the fences are as good as new been there at least 20 years.

 

warrjon,
seems like a great product. gonna pick up some at local harley dealer and give it try.
just out curosity, how much is it in Australia? thx

 

I bought it from the local hardware store (100km round trip away) it was about $13......

 

 

 

Best rust prevention. Don't Drive It !!! If you drive it. It will Rust ! The best you can hope for, is to slow it down. Blunt but true.

Jack

 

I drive my car in Vancouver in the winter, rain (6 months of it) and the occasional snow day. I periodically spray the underside with rubberized stuff as any car would have a similar undercoat treatment, and followup with a more temporary spray of this goopey anti-corrosion stuff, its essentially goop and a kind of oil film that sticks to metal and lasts a few months.

If you've got money to burn and are dead set on winter driving you could go and have the entire underside sprayed with truck bedliner in maximum thickness. I'd imagine this would involve removing any existing coatings and carefully isolating certain components to be individually sprayed afterward.

I had thought of doing something like this on the sill/rocker panel as you can get colour-matched (bright signal red) bedliner sprays and just do that on the bottom sides of my car. Of course nobody sees the underside so cheap black is good enough.

 

Does anyone have any experience with Dinitrol RC 900 Rust Converter Does it really work? I've noticed some rust appearing around the door sills on my XJ and looking to repair myself

 

This is how to rustproof an XJS for European winters, but you must do the work in summer:

• Buy AquaSteel and spray it into all box sections, sills, chassis tubes etc etc, including shoving the spray proble up from the boot over the rear wheelarch double skin (remove back seat and elbow trim before doing this bit). It is the absolute best rust converter and protector as used in the North Sea oil rigs, expensive but it really works
• Then spray rust-resistant paint into all the same cavities etc after the AquaSteel has dried (say a 3 or 4 days). Hammerite will do but Indestructible paints of Birmingham's Army-quality zinc-chromate (substitute) is best
• Then use s50 Dinitrol wax on top of the paint (in all the same places) once the paint has had 5 days to dry.
• On the vulnerable rear wheelarches and folded seams clean back to metal, apply the AquaSteel, then apply Rust Bullet or similar, as that resists stones etc.
• On the front wheelarches, remove the stone baffles, do the three stages as above, replace the baffles and, very important this, seal all round the baffles to the metalwork with gunk.

I did this 8 years ago and nothing ha reappeared since.

 

The problem with coatings like that is the application has to be perfect. If there is any place where it doesn't quite adhere then the salty water gets underneath and is trapped there, and the metal rusts much faster than if you'd done nothing at all.

 

I don't doubt this works but I would rather just buy a crappy winter beater and let the nice car hibernate each season.

 

Spray Lanox (or any Lanolin spray) into all the nooks and crannies once a year and it will never rust.

I use Lanox on all my machines, measuring equipment and tools. It will also remove surface rust. I had surface rust on my lathe chuck sprayed with Lanox and a light rub with 000 steel wool and its gone with no trace.

 

My XJ-S has an undercoating of 30 years of oil leaks. No rust anywhere near the oil.

 

One of the best things you could do in addition to the typical methods mentioned here is to routinely rinse the car. Buy or make an underbody spraying system to aid in this and very regularly rinse the salt off the car.

More critical than all the coatings on our boats is thoroughly rinsing them when we come back in. It makes a big difference.

 

I always thought that the oil leaks were a British Mandate so as to provide year round rust protection??

bob