Rubber matting for floor, cove it 100-200mm up walls.

Jerry-can full of freshwater, & towell/s for washing gear down after?!?

I've always said if a get a good enough vehicle to warrant it, I would install an electronic rust prevention system. Heard real good things about it.

couplertec.com.au/

For the moment, on quiet days you can hear my old van rusting...

Yep ...spray heaps of fish oil (or Tectyl)on the seams etc
Go to nearest carpet retailer/layer and round the back in their waste bin is always heaps of good s/hand carpet for FREE if it gets wet just replace it.

Obviously use a plastic crate for wet gear/
For wet sails get about 2.5m of 150mm plastic sewer pipe from plumbers supply, cut it in half lengthwise with angle grinder, bung up ends with ply and silicone, make frame,
and hey no more rust

Or you can just brush a bit of snake oil on it. That is even more effective than an electronic anti rust device.

www.4wdworld.com.au

Not sure about snake oil (maybe you are thinking of eucalyptus oil...!?), but it definitely sounds like it works.

mathew said...

Or you can just brush a bit of snake oil on it. That is even more effective than an electronic anti rust device.

www.4wdworld.com.au

Not sure about snake oil (maybe you are thinking of eucalyptus oil...!?), but it definitely sounds like it works.

Well you would have to believe every word they say wouldn't you. I mean what reason would they have to lie. They only sell the stuff.
On the other hand you could get a slightly more unbiased opinion, like;
"--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ian W 27/11/99 23:40:02

Subject: re: Rust Prevention post id: 11277

Yes we have tried the CAT system that you are talking about on Light vehicles that are used in the underground minesite that I am working at. There has been no noticable difference in the amount of rust, and we have stopped using them.



This forum is un-moderated. The views and opinions expressed are those of the individual poster and not the ABC. The ABC reserves the right to remove offensive or inappropriate messages. "
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
taken off this site;
www2.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/november1999/posts/topic10047.shtm

You see, one of the few advantages of being an old fart is that you get to see the same "miraculous new discoveries" about every 20 to 30 years.
They rely on the fact that there is a prospective sucker born every minute and so every 20 or thirty years there is a whole new crop to harvest.
So we get to see amazing new money saving devices such as "polarising crystals" for your fuel system, energy enhancers for your ignition system, cyclonic vane inserts for your air induction system, electronic anti rust devices to save your car from becoming a rustbucket and numerous others which slip my mind at the moment.
How do you pick them?? It's easy. Read their explanation on how they work and when they start drifting into the pseudo science babble for the explanation of how it works you know the main principle of operation is the good old reliable snake oil. Such terms as "the energy field vibrational frequency", and all the other laughable terms they use has the appearance of sound science but it is just "A grade snake oil."
In the case of the electronic rust preventer, cathodic protection is a long established and well tried and proven technology and it does work well for jetty piles, oil rigs boats and pipelines where you can establish a potential difference between the article to protect and the environment that it is in, e.g. an oil rig and the ocean, because both the oil rig and the ocean conduct electricity.
But that is not what is being sold here because a car is surounded by air which does NOT conduct electricity except under extremely high voltages which eventually cause the air to ionise and ten it will conduct electricity. But it will also fry anyone within cooee. Thus while you can place the negative wire onto the car which does conduct electricity, there is nowhere to place the positive electrode. The "amazing" new device mentioned above comes with a stick on pad which you stick onto the paint which for it to have any effect must somehow charge the atmosphere around the vehicle. Yeah, right. And if its a 4 wheel drive it needs 2 stick on pads to really give a good charge to even more of the atmosphere. Yeaaahh, rright! At a large increase in price too by the looks. That snake oil is expensive stuff. And it also seems that all this has to be "tuned" specifically to each sort of vehicle. WOW! I'm just amazed at all the new things which have been discovered since I wasted all those years at uni, cos we didnt cover any of this. Unless it was one of the lectures I slept through. Well i spose that's possible.

In my opinion, you would be better off spending your money on a can of fisholene. At least that sort of works and it is cheaper than snake oil and just as smelly.
Incidentally, after the fisholene has dried for 1 day, paint over it again with some ordinary oil based enamel paint. It seals it nicely so it doesnt attract sand and locks in the smell just a little bit.
Anyway, must rush off now because someone has just answered my add for a harbour bridge which I put on e bay.

mathew said...

My first question for you is, do you know how electron migration in materials works?

There is no need for "air to conduct electricity", as the oxidisation of steel occurs on the surface of the metal, where it is already acting as an anode. I'm not sure if this particular brand of reptilian oil works since the body is already the negative earth, but since they mention "capacitive" effect, there must be some form of alternating (aka pulsing) voltage superimposed onto the body.

I'm a little dubious of the claim that it can protect paint work... although the idea of making the paint become a dielectric is quite interesting and does require further investigation.

Outright dismissing the idea as being technobabble is fine, provided the science is actually suspect - in which case, state the reason why rather than simply dismissing it.

Mathew, I think that there is no science in this device to debunk, it is entirely technobable of a meaningless kind. Furthermore the 4WD article expounding the virtues of this device is wrong. I have spent my entire career to date as a corrosion engineer and operate a large anode manufacturing plant. In all that time we have made the structure we require to protect the cathode, with sacrificial systems corrosion occurs at the ANODE creating a protective supply electrons with impressed current systems an inert anode can be used and little or no corrsion occurs as the electrons are "generated" by an external power source. ie Corrosion is not "directed" anywhere with the impressed current system. Then I would say that we keep the structure electron poor so that electrons flow from the anode to the cathode via the surrounding electrolyte.
We do however use an Inductively Coupled Plasma Spectrometer for materials research purposes and an Optical Emission Spectrometer for QA purposes so I have absolutely no idea what Capacitive Coupling means and would gladly accept a non technobable explanation.

Interestingly I have never had any hesitation in chucking wet sailing gear etc in my Land Cruiser which I have owned from new (cost about $60K). I have just aquired an old Kombi , absolutely rust free and in mint condition for $5k, and am absolutely paranoid about the slighest drop of salt water coming near it. I cant figure out the logic but thats the way it is.

mathew said...

My first question for you is, do you know how electron migration in materials works?

There is no need for "air to conduct electricity", as the oxidisation of steel occurs on the surface of the metal, where it is already acting as an anode. I'm not sure if this particular brand of reptilian oil works since the body is already the negative earth, but since they mention "capacitive" effect, there must be some form of alternating (aka pulsing) voltage superimposed onto the body.

I'm a little dubious of the claim that it can protect paint work... although the idea of making the paint become a dielectric is quite interesting and does require further investigation.

Outright dismissing the idea as being technobabble is fine, provided the science is actually suspect - in which case, state the reason why rather than simply dismissing it.

Geez bob, this really needs a new heading. All the guy was asking for was how to line a van and he gets hit with all this. Oh well. Coffee time so here is episode 3.

"My first question for you is, do you know how electron migration in materials works?"
The answer is , not any more but it was basically covered in a uni course i did half way through last century. Along with why bent nails rust more than straight nails and a whole lot of other stuff which I never used again.

"Outright dismissing the idea as being technobabble is fine, provided the science is actually suspect - in which case, state the reason why rather than simply dismissing it."

I agree and I don't entirely dismiss the very remote possibility that they have stumbled onto something that for reasons that even the supplier can't explain, actually works. But I mostly dismiss it when I read the suppliers explanation of how it works and listen to his video clip. Which says in part that it works by "tricking nature" and supplying "an excess of electrons to the body of the vehicle" to top up the loss of electrons due to the corrosion process.
I very much take that as " the science being suspect" . In fact it is somewhere around this point that I detect the distinct aroma of snake oil.

If the device cost $50 or so I would say try it just for the curiosity value, but you see they are asking $300 to $500 for a gadjet which should be at the most $50 to $100 tops. I seriously think you are being ripped off.
To charge that sort of money the onus should be on them to provide some positive proof that it does work and why it works.
The "positve proof" that they supply is a list of establishments that have bought the device and then said that "all these people can't be wrong".
A mass following has never been proof of validity, accuracy or effectiveness. It just means that a lot of people were taken in by the sales spiel.
The fact is that all those people can be wrong and in this case i believe they are.

Can really smart people be taken in by a good sales spiel?
I am thinking back to the "fuel polariser" which you simply clipped over the fuel line of your car and it "polarised" the fuel and made it much more explosive and release far more energy during combustion. None other than the racing legend Peter Brock headed up the sales campaign and to see him speak about it on TV, you would have to be convinced that they had stumbled onto some great new discovery which couldn't be explained in scientific terms but actually worked. I mean, Peter Brock couldn't be wrong on this. He was a race winner of long standing and if anyone could detect a rise in horsepower and performance you would think this guy could. Well, apparently he couldn't. The science was suspect from the start and it eventually turned out to be just another load of horse feathers. The odd thing is, everyone knows that horses can't fly, but when someone starts selling horse feathers, people flock in the doors by the thousands. Thus thousands of poor suckers who needed to save a few dollars on fuel spent hundreds of dollars on a "fuel polariser" which did nothing except lighten their pockets.

I take this "capacitively coupled technology" (hey, doesn't that sound good. It must work.) as being just more of the same.

Back in the days when cars really did rust some used to stir a teaspoon of kero in the bucket of washing water. The idea was the kero would stick in all the crevices that rust was likely to start.
Rubber mats were much worse than carpet, any water that got under them stayed put.

If only I could contrive a shift to a location where rust was a problem, anyone whose car rusts these days is a lucky bastard, stop bragging.