Undercoating My Truck With Fluid Film

I’ve been working on this project since spring. For some reason, it’s taken all this time to get off my butt and finish things up. But now that both the truck and trailer are undercoated, I feel much better – especially living in Maine.

I wrote about Fluid film before. If you’re interested, you can read the posts here:

Fluid Film For Rust Prevention

Arising Industries Enclosed Cargo Trailer

Basically, the deal is that rubberized undercoating is no good for a good majority of parts on a vehicle that tend to rust because of salt use on the roads. If your car or truck has been undercoated with rubber, you’re in decent shape as far as floorboards and all that goes, but as far as axles, drive shafts, front and rear ends and all parts in between, you’re unprotected. From what I’ve seen around here, if that’s the case, you’ve got some issues that need to be corrected. Especially with rear bumpers. I can’t count how many rear bumpers I’ve seen that are rusted through.

The problem with rust is that it doesn’t just go away by itself. Actually, it doesn’t go away at all, unless you mechanically remove it. If that’s the route you decide to take in an attempt to save your vehicle from being eaten, you better get something to protect the parts you removed the rust from. And the truth of the matter is, it’s virtually impossible to remove rust from all parts of a vehicle. I wouldn’t even bother trying. That’s why I use Fluid Film.

I initially bought a gallon thinking that I’d have enough for both the truck and trailer. Unfortunately, I used about three quarts on the trailer alone. I did manage to finish almost half the truck with the remaining quart, but sadly, I ran out and needed more. When I went inside to order another gallon, I noticed that Amazon had 5-gallon buckets of this stuff available for the price of three gallons and some change. Since Fluid Film needs to be reapplied periodically, I felt that the 5-gallon bucket would be a wise investment. I bought that and it’s now sitting in my trailer.

Since today is about 70 degrees outside, I thought it would be a perfect time to finish undercoating the truck. It’s not a difficult job, just one that needed to get done. So, I went outside to peeled the lid of my new bucket of undercoating back to unearth that distinct smelling material that looks like turkey gravy. Mmmm. It’s actually a wool wax material that, once spray on to metal surfaces, soaks in and protects from oxidation. It also penetrates and lubricates.

I had my undercoating spray gun at the ready and it was begging to be filled up.

Now, I think a regular paint gun would have been fine with applying Fluid Film. It’s not all that thick. And it does thin out with heat, so if you decide to undertake this type of project and have a paint gun, go ahead and feel free to take advantage of it. Just be sure to clean it well before you use it for painting because I’m sure you don’t want oily undercoating to mix with expensive auto paint.

I learned a long time ago that attempting to pour material such as this out of a large bucket into a small opening doesn’t work too well. I now use a large spoon.

I also had a spatula and a towel nearby to clean up any mess I made.

A while ago, I purchased a nice DeWalt air compressor just for occasions such as this. It’s come in very handy.

The last time I applied Fluid Film, I set the compressor regulator to 60 pounds. Since that created a lot of over spray and wasted product, I lowered the pressure to 40 pounds. That seemed to work well today.

By the way, the reason I went with the DeWalt compressor is because the motor doesn’t burn out with lower voltage receptacles and extension cords like my previous compressor from Home Depot did. That was a disappointment.

For some reason, when I talk about undercoating with Fluid Film, those who I talk to still don’t quite understand what I’m under there spraying. Because of this, I decided to take some photos of the finished product. I think these are all pictures of the front end of my truck. That’s not for any particular reason – I just happened to be laying in these locations with my camera at the time. Basically, everything gets sprayed.

As you can see, you surely can’t protect these areas with rubber undercoating. Fluid Film works wonderfully for locations such as these.