rust...

a few questions on where the car may rust at.... does anyone know the likely places for an older vr4 to rust out at... jsut curious so i know if i should put alot of money into a car that i dont know is rusting from places i cant see... also where the battery sits the plate is rusted and its spread to the part of the car where the strut sits is this serious or can it be taking away some how if someone knows plz share...
thnks brad

I have poked around my stealth and it looks like they are pretty heavily galvanized, so rust shouldn't be a huge problem... That said I found rust on the underside of the back corners of my hatch, on the underside or the front corners of my hood... Pretty minor and no holes... I just sprayed some rust inhibitor on it.

The rust on the battery platform is pretty common because the battery leaked (anyone managed to fit an optima battery there?). That said, how bad is on the strut? Unless the battery exploded you shouldn't see it that high up.

That said, it's pretty dry in the engine compartment so the rust shouldn't be too bad...

It's pretty hard to take rust off once it has started (red rust had more oxygen then black rust so once you see red rust, even if you paint it over, it can create black rust which blisters the paint and the problem comes back).

I think you are more likely going to run into (expensive) mechnical problems with an old VR-4 then rust... Most of our cars retire because we can no-longer afford to maintain them and not because they have become rust buckets...

Um, I can take a few guesses.

1 your rotors...if your car sits too long they can rust.
2 your underbody if you live in a wintery (road salt) location...so wash your underbody often in the winter.

3 probably the wheel wells would be a place for them to start.

I don't really know from experience, except my rotors rusted a bit once, so I'm pretty much guessing. And last time I checked, I think my battery shelf had a little rust on it too...no big deal IMO.