Rear Wishbobe anti-corrosion treatment

[nhaynes]

I've recently performed some anti-corrosion treatment on my Elan's rear wishbones. I'm fortunate that my car is relatively low mileage and doesn't get driven in the wet or winter. It's also been regularly wax oiled. However, I wanted to have a good look at the rear wishbones so emabarked on cleaning, scraping and prodding 22 years of corrosion and wax oil off. For this I used some basic tools: various pointy bits (old screwdrivers, small chisels) wire brush, wire wool and a great degreasing product from Bilt Hamber: Surfex-HD. This is a water based de-greaser and comes in a spray bottle. You simply srapy onto the surface and wash it off with a hose or high pressure jet wash. Repeat several times and the wax oil was off. I then ensured all loose iron oxide was removed by careful mechanical means, pointy tools, wire brush etc and again degreased and washed. Fortunately, the wishbones looked in really good condition. Alot of the original paint was still present along with some light surface rust. There was some local pitting but no holes. Once dry, I applied another Bilt Hamber product: Hydrate-80. This stuff stabilises the surface by transforming the iron oxide layer of the steel into a protective polymer-metal complex that grips the metal surface providing a tough barrier to avoid further corrosion. I applied the Hydrate-80 with a brush, carefully working it into any crevices. It comes out of the bottle a blueish/white, turns grey when in contact with the steel and dries black. I applied 2 coats as per the instructions which you can find at http://www.bilthamber.com/hydrate-80. I'm very pleased with the results (see attached pictures) so I plan to perform similar treatments on adjacent components and then apply Bilt Hamber Dynax-S50 wax oil to all the treated components. I'd be very interested to hear if anyone else has any experience of Hydrate-80 or any other of the Bilt Hamber products.

[Jeemy]

As far as I am concerned Bilt-Hamber is the best stuff out there. I'm using a lot of their detailing products and for the second half of my rebuild i used their prep products instead of the POR15 ones I'd used up til now. POR15 is still the best rust paint out there, and their enamel is great, but Surfex beats out Marine Clean for both usage and safety, and Dynax is nothing short of incredible. Korrosol is the best pre-detail product I've ever found. It takes off not only old wax, polish leaving bare paint/clearcoat to work with, but pulls out all fallout from the paint as well, leaving you with the perfect surface to start protecting from scratch after correction.