writes:

"wool oil" - aka Lanolin is also used commercially.

Here in southern Norway, the roads are kept more or less continually wet
with salt throughout the winter. Buying a used car that's been "rust
proofed" with Tectyl, or some other such material, is a dangerous
gamble. As often as not, you'll find that the metal is mostly rust
behind the smooth looking surface. Hacking at the bottom panels of the
body with a screwdriver to look for places where there's no original
metal left is part of the mandated bi-yearly roadworthiness test.

I prefer older cars (my daily driver is a '98 Range Rover, and I also
own a '66 Land Rover), and like many, many others around here, I swear
by lanolin. It covers the entire underside of the car, including the
insides of all frame elements and other channels, doors, fenders, etc.
The stuff crawls deep into crevices and vertically up panels, and stops
exising rust from spreading, and new rust from beginning. There's very
little dripping, and lanolin is environmentally friendly. Before it
became available over here, spraying used engine oil (and then going for
a drive on a dusty dirt road to seal it in) was a common practice.

Here's how well it sticks: the left half of this car was sprayed with
lanolin, the right half with a mineral oil (not used engine oil, but a
mineral oil specifically made for this purpose) -- and the picture was
taken after the car had then been in daily use for six months:

http://www.antirust.no/wp-content/up...behandling.jpg

-tih
--
Elections cannot be allowed to change anything. --Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble