rust fighting, 2nd installment

if you want the rust hole fix, do it /before/ you oil, not after. painting on top of oil impregnation is a pita.

I wouldn't even bother painting any "holed" rust unless I painted it with POR-15 first. That seems to lock in the painted rust at least. But you'll still get more rust behind it, so it's just a stopgap to slow things down. Surface rust due to paint defects can just be sanded, primed, and finished, so that's trivial. I wouldn't bother with any oiling. Messy, and makes other cosmetic painting ineffective. The POR-15 is about 25 bucks for the small kit, and should be enough for any typical car rusting. I've used that on my last 2 cars when they got holed. Never bondoed the holes, just used it to slow the rust, and it did. Holed rocker panels has always been the main issue for me, here in saltland. But by that time, it's time to think about replacing the car anyway, since the newer ones generally have engineering improvements that make it practical. Found that true in my case anyway. My latest transitions to "new" cars has been '76, '88, '97, '03. All "large" to "mid" sized Chevy sedans. The last, from a '97 Lumina, to an '03 Impala, is probably the least improvement except in terms of gas consumption. In some areas, the Impala is lower quality than the Lumina. I really only see engineering improvement showing up in gas consumption. Maybe safety, don't know. But I have to wait until things go wrong to really know which car is better. I know where you're coming from, since I would have kept the Lumina forever with holed rockers, but the engine broke. If there was no rust I would have replaced the engine, but fighting the losing rust battle made me bite the bullet and update to a non-rusted car. A man's got to know his limitations.

gotcha. money are tight at the moment

well, so far the only (newly developed) problem with the drivetrain is that the beater started to pop out of the 4th gear. no such problem with 1-3 and the 5th.

the plan is to give it to my wife to learn how tio drive so I want it to last another 2-3 years if possible.

strategically placed bungee cord can help mitigate that.

When was the transmission oil last changed? Are you sure the transmission is actually full of oil?

I would change it and see if the problem goes away.... gear oil is not expensive, and transmissions are.

--scott

I've had that exact problem on an old FWD VW transmission. Bad output shaft seal caused the gear oil to leak out, trans would overheat and drop out of 5th. Fill it up, it'd work fine. Unfortunately it was found that the root cause was a bad bearing, so swapping the whole trans for a junkyard unit was cheaper than repair (really easy on that car)

nate

about a year ago

no

gotcha. thanks!