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Salt and bare metal just love to work up rust - fast. All the rust needs is a tiny chip to grab hold. Find those; attack those; and you have a lot of the job done.
When you wash, get underneath as much as you can and especially in the wheel wells with the wand. Check for loose goops of the undercoat that came with the car and replace as required.
When you wash. Pay special attention to getting the car's water traps dry again, even if that includes using a keyboard compressed air bomb to get the water out of known traps.
Also, find a way to get underneath the rubber mudflaps, which are bad for trapping water/salt.
I was checking through a Canadian publication called "Lemonaide" last night. They say Saab 9-3's and 900s from 1998 on back are particularly susceptible to rust in the lower parts of the doors. How that gets going is beyond me. Sounds like it's coming from the inside so I plan on checking carefully how the doors can trap moisture inside. If it cannot be from the inside, then since the lower doors take a lot of abrasion, perhaps those small paint-worn areas outside are big enough to allow the rust to get going. Another job for close touch-up paint attention.
I protect the insides of the doors and the engine bonnet and boot. More precisely, I use the polymer protection there and wax on the ouside surfaces, giving it, as you do, the odd extra thin coat during the winter; thicker on the leading edges like the roof, the posts, and the bonnet.
If, as I do, you pick up the odd stone chip in the winter, get at it with the touch-up paint right away. Don't delay.
Oh.....and heated garages are murder for rust. Better keep the car cold than alternate, cold to warm, if you can.
posted by 207.181.7...
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