Underbody Care: Keeping it clean and rust free

[Accumulator]

... For my new Jeep, I want the exposed undercarriage to look great. While I don't wash the underside quite as often as Accumulator, I do actually wash, with a mit and brush, everytime I rotate tires, which is usually at the 5k mark..

While I'd do it more often than that (OK, I won't push the "at every wash!" bit...), just a note that the Eastwood Black HDAR might be a *little*, uhm....soft/gooey/you know for the mitt and that an aggressive brush might mess it up too. I wash it with a soft brush with no issues, but it can be a fine line between aggressive enough to scrub an undercarriage and soft enough to not mess up the HDAR (not that it's all that soft/gooey/you know/fragile after it fully dries). Just giving you a heads up so you don't learn the hard way.

.. I had to sell my Tundra because I couldn't take it anymore. The paint was flawless, the underside was starting to look like crap!

Ya know, that old Blazer I'm always using as an example was simply CRUSTY with rust underneath. Nothing structurally threatening, but you know...the rails/hangers/stuff that everyone sees was just terrible. That quickie job I did on it, figuring "eh, as long as it looks OK for a little while..." ended up staying nice for, well...it's been maybe six years now. That POS looked so nice that when my "good" painter's son/partner heard I was gonna dump it (because I thought it was so crappy looking) he bought it for his "good truck" and he still has it.



The point being, you might be surprised how well you can do, as long as nothing structural/important is rotting away. Gotta be a little careful about the important places like the body/frame mounts though, don't want to inadvertently trap moisture there by using the wrong stuff/technique. In the absence of a proper application of the ValuGard stuff (which I agree is the best thing, but I mean sprayed on with a gun, not the spray can version), there are some "thin enough to get into where they need to go, thick enough to do the protecting" that you can use.