Using a Sacrificial anode on a car to suppress or at least help prevent rusting

Its still available

Road Trip!!

Free Cats with every machine tool purchase!

Gunner

"Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide"

- James Burnham

lol

However..the small towns can be nice to live in. Particuarly since most of the state Is Red, except for the urban areas.

Gunner

"Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide"

- James Burnham

Not worth the bother. Without submersion in a conductive media they don't work. Best solution to salt is to WASH the vehicle completely. This means you pull the door panels and any trim so you can wash out ALL the hidden spots. Then use hot air to dry all those areas real well. Now spray the panels with some good undercoating. MAKE SURE YOU KEEP THE DRAINS OPEN in the panels. if not normal condensation will not get out and it will cause problems.

For a good undercoating you want something that will stay in place BUT will stay semi soft so that it can flex as the panels expand and contract. I use three types (depends on the panel and finish wanted) One is a Body Shutz 08864, another is Rust Fighter-I 08891 The last is from an outfit in Canada and goes on like water, BUT it goes into any body seams or openings and as the carrier dries it leaves a thick waxy coating behind. The first two are great for large panels. The first also makes a good sound deadener.

I wanna, I need a... No, I can't. I must not.

If I show up, it's too tempting. They don't make trucks big enough (at least not that I can drive, I only have a simple Class C...) and I have no place to put it. I need to go through my own Piles Of Stuff and seriously winnow it all down first - throw out the hopeless trash, sort and box the breakers and panel parts...

Might be nice to be able to park a car in the garage (even temporarily) for the first time in 36 years.

And if I bring home a kitten the Parrot is going to be seriously pissed when he finds out he's no longer an Only Pet.

-->--

Amazon?

Harold

Mi Casa....su casa

my #1 lady friend, who visits the homestead regularly, usually brings her Amazon Green. The cats are curious, but leave it alone.

Come on up, its not that far. Im home all weekends

Gunner

"Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide"

- James Burnham

Double-Yellow, wild caught we think, about 40, and has a serious attitude problem with men. We adopted him 20 years ago when one of our neighbors moved to an apartment that was totally No Pets.

-->--

Cool! They're reputed to be amongst the best talkers, although not quite as good as an African gray. We've owned a couple parrots through the years, and have baby sat one other. Found it's real common for them to favor one sex over the other, and they damned well know the difference. Midas, our blue & gold macaw, liked women. Barney, the red head Amazon, liked men. He was mistreated by the wife of a friend, the guy that gave the bird to us. If you don't know, the macaws are quite intelligent. Midas could remove the lock and open his cage and be on top faster than people could do it for him. The only way to keep him in was to use a padlock. Not sure, but I think he was studying locksmithing when we sold him. :-)

Harold

Hi, I have just removed the front stone guard and chassis end covers from m y 1933 Rolls Royce for the first time since it was made and in the chassis cavity I find 3 magnesium sacrificial anodes each side. The chassis is stee l and it's immaculate and the covers are aluminium and they are immaculate with no corrosion, the anodes however are almost completely corroded away.

Interestingly this car was first delivered to Ontario in 1933 for it's new owner Fredric William Cowan chairman of the Ontario Malleable Iron Company and it remained in the family's ownership until 1974 so the car knows about your environment and road conditions.

Seems the anode Idea is neither mad or new

Both metal hull boats/ships and buried pipelines use anodes so the idea is certainly feasible although if one mixes various metals it might be a bit complex to figure exactly what you wanted to do to [protect all of them.

Another system that might be of interest is an electronic system, I believe called a "Cathodic System" where sensors determine the difference in potential and feed an electrical current to oppose existing current flows.

Sacrificial anodes are widely used on boats -- magnesium for fresh water and zinc for salt water. Aluminum (pure) is becoming more common in salt water, and it's also more effective in brackish water.

Some things to keep in mind: It only works if you have a good electrical connection between the anode and the metal being protected. The water is not enough. You need either a good, clean contact, or an electrical wire connecting the two.

Any of the steel that is not electrically connected will not be protected. The way it works is that the anode/cathode (the cathode is the steel, iron, aluminum alloy, brass or bronze) combination forms a battery, and the anode material is "eaten" away as the "battery" conducts electricity. The water is the electrolyte.

I have a couple of 10-pound anodes ("zincs") left over from when I maintained my uncle's 42-foot boat. Two of them would last a year, protecting the bronze prop shaft and the propeller, as well as the stainless and bronze through-hull fittings. If the prop shaft was stainless and if there was any aluminum down there, like an aluminum propeller, they would have been eaten up in a few months without anode protection.

I've never seen them installed on a car, but I suppose it would work. You might look into the "pencil" zincs and magnesium rods that are used in fresh-water cooling systems for salt-water boats.

On 4/12/2016 9:18 AM, Ed Huntress wrote: ...

Right! And where is the electrolyte in a car?

Bob

I assume it's an intermittant thing: when the area is wet, you have an electrolyte. When it's dry, you don't have to worry about corrosion, anyway.

Again, I haven't seen it used on a car. I'm guessing about how it would work in practice.

Kinda' - when the _anode_ is wet you get protection, when it's dry and anywhere else is wet, that anywhere else is not protected.

Me too - and my BS detector gave a low-level hum on the OP. The OP had more details than the usual BS, but there is still the fundamental chemistry issue. Maybe the Rolls in the OP had some kind of permanent electrolyte that didn't need to be wetted. But then the anodes wouldn't last 80+ years. I dunno.

Bob

I think I'd have to see it. I can't picture it being very effective, but then, Rolls Royce would go to extremes in the old days, to make everything as perfect as they knew how. Maybe...

I wonder, too, about stray currents. Those are the really big problems with boats, which are docked around electrical currents. The ground rods for shore power -- often just an EMT shield -- tend to eat the submerged metal parts of boats, even when they're protected with sacrificial anodes. You probably have such stray currents in an old car, which tend to have a lot of high-resistance paths to the battery ground.

I'm skeptical but it's not something I've heard about before.

The electronic units are totally useless except for the insurance policy that comes with them. Friends have 5 and 6 year old vehicles that have had in excess of $5000 worth of rust repair done under warranty. (make sure you keep up with the inspections or the policy is null and void).

My daughter's Neon rusted very badly with the unit installed - no warranty because one inspection had been missed. I have 20 year old vehicle with no rust - used RustCheck.

I'm in tha salt and slush belt of Central Ontario - every bit as bad for rust as Ottawa.

It'll work fine on your car if you park it in a full drainage ditch. Doesn't (apparently) work too well dry.

The part that is going to rust can be wet and salty while the anode location is clean and dry.

It's been tried - the results are not encouraging - not worth the cost and effort of installing, generally speeking.