As previously noted, my car's an 1986 3-door Accord LXi. It was relatively well-taken care of by the last owner (my step-grandfather), but it sat around in a drive way for a couple of years, and has accrued a bit of rust, mainly around the joints.

I don't have the money to fix the damage (poor college student ), but I was wondering what, if anything, I could do to prevent further rust damage.

I live in SW Michigan, which gets tons of lake effect snow, so I'm a little worried about salt and basic winter wear and tear.

 

All I can recommend is to keep it CLEAN especially during the winter. Hell, just swing into the car wash, drop a buck and spray the underside as good as you can. Rust is cancer to a car, nothing will stop it.

 

If you going to drive it in winter, there's really nothing you can do to slow it.

 

[QUOTE]
"so I'm a little worried about salt and basic winter wear and tear. "

Sadly you should be..... because it's just going to get worst, unless you can garage it (as I suspect your step-grandfather did).

Road salt is insidious, it gets everywhere and starts corroding right off.
There is two ways to handle rust (corrosion)
1) Prevent it
a) waxes
b) sealers
3) frequent trips to the car wash (chassis wash in particular)

2) repair it

Rust proofing will slow it down, but any bodyshop worth it's weight will tell you it's a long drawn out project repairing rust. Missing metal needs to be patched, surface rust must be ground down to fresh metal, filled and primed.

There are several paints available (Krylon, Dupli-color and others) which have what they call "rust-stop" . It might be worth looking at.

P

 

buy a beater for a few hundred bucks that u can drive around in the winter just make sure the heater works well ..that is what i did when i lived in wisconsin ..best way to prevent rust on a nice car ,,,

 

The car I have currently probably qualifies as a "beater" by many people's standards. It's 19 years old, it cost less than a thousand dollars.... Still, I want to keep it hale and healthy for as long as I can.

 

Thanks. It makes me sad that rust is not something I can make better right now, but at least I can slow down its spread.