Nissan Patrol 4x4 (Africa)

What do you all do for treating and preventing further rust on suspension,steering and other drivetrain components? Any place around Pretoria that specializes in rusty patrols?

I experimented with a technique to clean up my 1981 280zx and 5 years later still looks clean and rust free. I want to see if someone can clean up my 1984 safari while it's still in Pretoria before I ship it to the USA. It will save me the labor and pain since I no longer have a full size lift in my garage. What I did with my other car is scrub all the surface rust off with a wire brush. Then with a 3M pad wash everything clean with
Marine cleaner, a degreaser cleaner diluted with water that's not going to leave any residue. Air dry and let it sit for couple hours in the sun to make it is completely dry. Cover all rubber and greased spots with a tape. Next etch the exposed surfaces and apply a zinc phosphorite layer. You want to brush on any kind of product that will turn the rust to iron oxide, and provide a bonding layer for the final protective coating. I used por-15 metal prep and it works wonderful. For the final coating you can either use something more permanents to seal the metal like por-15 or what I opted to do just spray or rub on boeshield t9 or something like wd40. I liked boeshield because it dries clear fast and does not leave a oily layer that will bond with dust. The application was only 3 steps and excluding the drying time took less than 3 hours. Shouldn't take much longer with a 4wd vehicle.

The only trouble with rust, especially in my case, is that the rust gets into nooks and crannies that one can either not see or get to. On mine, the rust is also inside the chassis itself and although I treated the visible parts, I till get bits of rust falling out of all those holes that are in our chassis. I bought a spray bottle and tried spraying rust converter into those holes but the oxidation marches on.

Many years ago, a friend of mine with an old Landy, stripped it down and had the chassis galvanized. Unfortunately he went on to sell the Landy so I dont know how well the chassis lasted.

Has anyone on the forum had experience with galvanizing?

A friend of mine used the Eastwood product to spray the internal frame of his FJ. Guess we can't stop the cancer just slow it. It's a mixture of rust encapsulator, resin that adheres and seals over existing rust and has zinc phosphate to prevent as much as possible future rust. It comes in a spray can with a 2 feet nozzle, you just poke it through a drain hole as far as possible, start spraying and slowly pull the nozzle backwards.

And to add, cleaning first is important as described on several jeep forums. Use the marine clean and one of the hand pressure pumps you can buy at the Home Depot or garden shop. Spray and wash out the inside of the frame. Then let it dry, and use a air pressure gun at one side of the frame and a shop vacuum at the other side (tape over all other holes) and simultaneously blow/suck all loose debris out. Next, use a telescoping magnet attached to a flex hose and pull this through the frame ends to get all flaky rust pieces out. Then use the spray application such as Eastwood, you'll need 4 cans. This is by far more cost effective than galvanizing. Yes you may have to repeat the procedure in a couple of years but the reports I've read folks who've done this indicate that if you wash sand and dirt of the frame every time after offroading in mud and rivers it can still look clean after 5 years.