Thread: Defender 90 in Salt water environment

Gday kewvic, welcome
The new Defenders have steel doors and bonnet these days. Apart from that there pretty much the same. A good dose of fish oil or similar in the chassis, and in the A and B pillar can't hurt. Inside the doors has been waxed and on mine and seems to be done sufficiently, but again, in an environment like yours a second coating would not hurt.

The door cars can be tricky and fittings easily broken when removing the first time as a novice. Ask the dealer to apply what you (or they) supply. Being brand new they might do this for love, or it's not going to cost that much in the scheme of things either.

Any reason why you are thinking of a 90 instead of a 110?

I've had both, and the luggage capacity of the 90 is SEVERELY lacking if you need to go anywhere with more than 2 people (and I'd suggest they are pretty limited even with 2 people). Brilliant off road though, and good for city parking.

Rustproof - lanolin, fishoil etc on a regular (6 monthly) basis, and spray anything you don't rustproof with rp7 (or similar) weekly.

I was at a govt auction a few years back and there was a 2 year old LC troopy and a 2 year old 130 Defender. Both had spent 2 years on moreton island (could tell from log books).

The LC had a badly pitted rear axle housing - half-marble size chunks of rust falling off. The chassis and body were quite good.

The 130 on the other hand, looked fine externally, but you could grab the chassis and come away with a handfull of rust. I wouldn't have trusted it to drive out of the auction yard without snapping the chassis, yet the LC could probably have done the big lap.

In short - LR's are great at rusting away like crazy from underneath while they look fine, and the box section chassis don't drain water, mud and salt as well as others.

Rustproof often!

I have been researching this topic for a while now and to summarise, I'm going to be using products from NILRUST. (Having it treated by guys that do it for a living rather than try applying it myself)

There aren't any agents in VIC, but plenty in the other states... perfect excuse for me to go on a little trip.

As others have said, keep up the rust proofing and they wont be a problem, and for the new ones with steel doors etc, i beleive they are galvanised steel skins?

I live about 50m of the ocean, the salt air and frequent beach use does take its toll but nothing extra maintainence and cleaning wont solve.

I would seriously look into Waxoil from the UK in terms of the conditions you describe. It would be of no use elsewhere in Oz, but Tassie would be perfect. Nasty stuff to work with, but the rust proofing is second to none and in the UK a single application is guaranteed for 5 years.

It's a paraffin based product and any blemish or scratch in the surface self heals by "bleeding" closed. This aspect is also the reason it won't work anywhere that is permanently warm...

Originally Posted by Loubrey

I would seriously look into Waxoil from the UK in terms of the conditions you describe. It would be of no use elsewhere in Oz, but Tassie would be perfect. Nasty stuff to work with, but the rust proofing is second to none and in the UK a single application is guaranteed for 5 years.

It's a paraffin based product and any blemish or scratch in the surface self heals by "bleeding" closed. This aspect is also the reason it won't work anywhere that is permanently warm...

Hmm i am not a fan of Waxoil. I had it on the chassis of an ex UK lightweight i used to own. It was so thick that it covered bolt heads. It was an enormous pain in the arse to get of the chassis and i found a few places that had rusted away underneath the Waxoil coating.

The original paintwork on the chassis on my son's Puma was very poor.He coats it with Tectyl,a Valvoline product that can be painted on,also comes in a pressure pack for the hard to get to areas.He had the inside of the chassis done by professionals,they used a bore scope to make sure it was coated inside correctly.

Even the little things such as the screws that hold the floor panels seem to rust.He has replaced most of them with stainless screws,a relatively cheap & easy exercise.The screws at fastening suppliers are a LOT cheaper than from bunnings or any hardware place.

The other thing is the foam under the rubber that is in the front footwells seems to hold water once it gets wet,it takes a long time to dry out,which causes the screws under it to rust.

The way the Puma is built it is relatively easy to rust proof & also eye ball it regularly to check on it,unlike something like a D4,as an example.

Hope this helps