It's Evil no doubt about it. But the Cruiser gods will grant you forgiveness for your transgressions if you make every honest attempt to preserve your junk. Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I just drove my '62 from Omaha to NJ. Salty to more Salty. The truck was pretty clean when I picked it up, so I cleaned up the underneath and painted the chassis with Chassis Saver (thread here:
Chassis Saving.)
More recently I made up some home-made Waxoyl and soaked everything. I have used Fluid Film on my Silverado and the wifes 4Runner the last two winters in Omaha (which gets a decent amount of salt - lots of rusty vehicles.)
The Fluid film has it's limitations though - it's excellent for the insides of doors and inside frame members, but it does wash away on high spray areas or if you're in mud. It has worked great on the 4Runner (still looks like it never left Oregon), but on the Silverado the cab front cab mounts and a few other areas rusted anyway. The frame paint (if you can call it that) Chevy uses really looses adhesion when the fluid film soaks in. The 4Runner has pretty much stayed on pavement, whereas the Silverado saw some use on the typical muddy slimey rutted rural backroads, the kind that leaves your truck caked with 2" of slime underneath. That kind of use will wipe away the Fluid Film. On the 4Runner, the Fluid Film has stayed put pretty well, with most everything underneath still coated pretty good after spring wash down. One great thing about the FF, if you get the spray hoses that Kellsport sells, you can snake them up into the door and hatch drain holes and get good coverage inside the doors and other area. The FF creeps better than my mixture, so I will continue to use it on inside panels and seams.
I had done some reading on the various recipes for Waxoyl, and thought it should hold up better to water spray and dirt/mud. So I made some and sprayed it on. I used about a gallon on the '62. It goes on pretty wet, but dries to a waxy/oily coating that is only slightly tacky at room temp. The underside of the '62 is still clean and pretty much dust free after driving cross country this past week. I did some test spray on a rusty section of the frame on the '40 and it looked like it would work well in that application too, made the area a little darker but nothing really rubbed off on your fingers when you touch it, and if you spray water onto it it beaded right off.
Here is what I did... I used a metal pail, a coleman stove, mineral spirits, paraffin wax and bar and chain oil. I used bar and chain oil because it has tackifiers in it (makes it sticky) and a little phosphoric acid which kills existing rust. Seems those attributes would make it favorable compared to regular engine oil.
I first melted the wax (just holding the blocks and melting them with a propane torch over the metal pail).
After the wax was melted, I mixed in the mineral spirits and bar and chain oil and kept the mixture hot by placing the pail in a pot of water on the stove. I filled up the spray gun bottles from the pail while it was still hot - gotta keep this stuff hot, it goes on best when you can barely hold the bottles after filling them.
This is the setup.
And the spray gun (stock photo..) from Eastwood, which is the same one I have used for fluid film.
I sprayed at 90 psi. The 360 degree spray tip wand that comes with the Eastwood gun is great. It allows you to get into the frame, crossmembers, back inside the fenders inside behind the panels, up under skidplates, etc.
This was the original recipe I tried. I ended up adding almost twice this much mineral spirits so the stuff went on smoother and was a little more fluid. I ended up around 2 lbs wax, 1 qt. bar and chain oil, and a gallon of mineral spirits.
The stuff seems like it should work well. It covered good, and now that the mineral spirits have evaporated off the coating seems way more durable than fluid film (i.e. it's not going to get taken off by water spray and typical on-road use). I'm sure if you are bombing down gravel you're gonna destroy it, but i'm hoping it holds up better than the fluid film. It sure is cheaper.