Washing it *properly* - cleaning inside of sills?

[wannabe]

This may be a dumb post...

... but I had to run mine all through winter, which meant salt-tastic conditions for a couple of months.

The shell seems pretty solid so I'd like to keep it that way, so I was wondering about any nooks and crannies I shiouldn't forget about?

I was also wondering about cleaning inside the sills - is it even possible to get to the inside of them?  If so, would some de-ionised water put in and sloshed about with a short drive effectively remove anything inside them??

[Rickster]

I think that the reason cars suffer in the UK is not just the salt - it's the general damp conditions we have for most of the year. I think the biggest thing to think about if you get the inside of the sills wet would be drying it properly. Ok if you have a nice HVAC garage but if your car is outside in our damp weather I doubt it will ever dry out. It's the moisture sitting there unseen that does the damage.
tbh I'd wash the salt off and dry it as best you can!!

[atlex]

I don't think many people clean inside the sills.

I'd look inside from above with a borescope first. (a most valuable tool)

if you really had to clean inside, knowing there was something to shift out... pressure water hose followed by airgun (to get the water out) followed making sure it was 100% dry followed (borescope again) by something like dinitrol or acf50 (to seal it).

maybe try just airgun

you don't want to seal water underneath a sealant! that would just rot the sills faster than doing nothing.

[minty]

having spent time under my new (to me) car sorting the exhaust, I got to see how bad my sills etc are - depressing as it only came to the uk in 2009.i think what I'm trying to say is, in this country we're all fooked!

[Meerkat]

I also don't think there'd be much benefit in introducing water into the sills - you'd only make a small difference if any, and any benefit would probably be offset by the chance of corrosion from trapped moisture.

I agree with Atlex though that it is worth checking your sills with a boroscope to see what condition they're in. You can pick up a cheap boroscope for about £5 online. You can get into the sills quite easily if you take off the plastic trim on the seatbelt towers. There's a big access hole behind it, and with some careful feeding you can work the camera right down into the bottom of the sills from there.

If it's still looking pretty solid (and dry) you can inject some cavity wax into it to protect it and stop any further corrosion - though I would say the best time to do that is probably at the end of summer, after a sunny spell, when the car should be at it's driest.

[Edit]: Someone on the almonds forum posted this really useful exploded diagram of the sills. I found it really useful when I was trying to visualise how all the layers fit together:

[wannabe]

Nice vid!  Cheers for posting

I'll have to order a boroscope at some point - it'll be useful to also check out the other 'projects' that I need to do something with at some point...

TBH I think I'm just putting things off for fear of finding terminal issues  lol

[painter4]

Not sure about sills but you can get front and rear chassis rails and treat them .. need bumpers off though but not difficult



no rust so treated with this 








did the same to rear legs ,and also squirted into sill wherever i found a factory hole .. the cans come with a very long lance great for hard to reach places

[herrkah]

A german classic cars magazine "Oldtimer Markt" did a long series of tests from 2009 to 2013.
There the grease-based products had better results than wax-based ones.

This newspaper article summarizes the results:
translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.faz.net%2Faktuell%2Ftechnik-motor%2Fauto-verkehr%2Fmike-sander-ist-der-star-gegen-rost-bei-oldtimern-13562821-p2.html%3FprintPagedArticle%3Dtrue%23pageIndex_2&edit-text=

These are the last editions of the test (sorry - obviously in german )
2013: www.timemax.de/wp-content/uploads/oldtimer_markt_rostschutz-test_teil_3.pdf
2010: www.oldtimer-markt.de/www/otm/files/2016/12/oldtimer_markt_rostschutz-test_teil_2_1.pdf

My NA 5 will get Mike Sander's grease! The material itself is quite cheap, but it needs to be heated before spraying. There are some workshops specialized in this ...
www.mike-sander.de/

[painter4]

I am sticking with British made ..

[herrkah]

Either way, it seems a good idea to protect the front legs of NBs as they seem to be a weak spot for rust!
Well done!

[atlex]

interesting to see if I can reach in those holes without removing the bumper ^^

[painter4]

Yes you can get into most holes with the long lance that comes with the can ..,as the front legs are like a cheese grater (thats the problem ) but its very awkward , and also you cant see what you managed to cover properly . you would also have to take wheels off to get all the holes .
Its no big deal to remove front bumper and back is very easy .. i did rear legs too