As my first Beta (Saloon) rusted quite a bit despite being rustproofed since new I thought that I would add some experience on oil based rust proofing. Lately I have used pure oil based proofing for my cars. Where I live (just outside Oslo) they use salt and grit on the roads. The grit acts as sand paper and the salt, well it just does what salt does during a wet winter. Even so rust seems to have been stopped in its tracs where it had begun and no new rust has shown up. Wrt our daily drivers I get them treated once a year, the classics get the treatment every second year. If you don't use your cars during the salty season every three years should do the trick. On these shores the cost is about a third of the full treatment with the traditional methods. I have seen some cars including a late 60'ies Opel which has been used continuously and treated annually all these years showing no rust at all.
Even on cars with older drying and cracking treatment the oil seems to have managed to creep in and effectively keept the water out. Old cracked treatment is worse than none because water seeps in and festers so this effect of the oil version is good news.
BTW, this year I have tried a new version: Lanolin based oil as in sheeps wool oil. Is said to be even better in resisting being washed off and hardly drips after treatment (the older oil is mineral oil and makes bad stains the first few days so parking on grass is preferable. From an environmental angle the lanolin version is better too although slightly less sheep (er, cheap
).
So once I have done the little rust fixing there is on my new aquisition (the HPE in new members' section) it will get the lanolin treatment too.
