Hello, I was in surplus city and I saw this today:

 

It was the only one there, hooked to a piece of plywood for display, no instructions or explanation except a little picture showing basically how it is hooked up.

 

It is a 3"X3"X1.5" box with 3 lights on it and it says "rustlers electronic rust control" It has 4 wires sticking out of it, one red labled power, one black labled ground, and two gray wires each ending in a gray plastic covered square labeled "anode".

 

the picture showed the red to power (+ on the batt.), the black to a ground and the two anodes hooked on oppsite sides of the engine compartment.

 

What - the - Hell?

I remember seeing those back in the 80's in the JC whiteny and Johnson Smith Things you never knew existed catalogs. I am pretty sure they are crap.

Yea, I knew it was crap, I just had never heard of one before.

 

I'll still probabaly get it for ten bucks, just to tear apart.

Rusting is a chemical reaction, meaning electrons are being transferred between the atoms. This supposedly puts a charge on the body of the car, so that the charged atoms (ions) become stable (not + or -) and the reaction will not take place. I am not quite sure whether the principle or the product works, but apparently people driving their cars on the beach in the salt water have used them successfully.

Could this thing potentially hurt my car?

 

I thought of getting it and hooking it up to show to my friends for a laugh, and if it works.......

Heck, for $10, assuming it doesn't put too much of a load on the alternator, what could you loose? If it helps, it helps, and if it doesn't, you're out $10.

it is not high current at all, it isn't even going to drain your battery in any appreciable amount, it isn't going to hurt your car in any way. There are two types of this kind of rust protection: sacrificial, and electrical. Both do the same thing, and the sacrificial method is used almost universally in boats. Sacrificial is when you have a piece of zinc on the bottom of your boat, which corrodes instead of the aluminum of the outboard or hull, because it is more reactive. The zinc can only protect the metal that is in contact through water, but rust usually happens when the metal is wet anyways. This product sounds like a combination of sacrificial and electrical methods. The theory works, and if the product is built correctly it will work too. The problem is that there's almost no way to really tell if it's working until you wait for years. Then you also don't know how bad it would have been if you hadn't bought it. If you remember grade 11-12 chem you should understand how this works. If you do then I could go into valence electrons, ions, charges etc. Obviously it won't cure rust, but it will greatly slow it from spreading.

I would think that would really screw up the electronics of the car, anywhere the system grounds to the body... But I'm not an electrician... :eh:

I live in NYS, the salt belt.

 

About 10 years ago they had a similar device called an "electronic rust evader" that I put on my old, rusty 82 CJ-7 jeep.

It didn't help at all. The Jeep died of rust.

 

However, 5 years ago when I bought a (used) mint condition 96 Nissan Quest minivan (with no rust) I brought a new "rust evader" gizmo and the van still has NO rust to this day. At 112K the van still looks like it's brand new.

 

I think these gizmos only work on a rust free vehicle. I read somewhere that they use a similar technilogy on the oil tankers and oil rigs in the ocean to prevent the salt water from eating them up.

 

I have found that the best way to fight rust is to sand it out, use a rust converter spray paint, then put a top coat of a good glossy paint so nothing sticks to it.

 

 

T.J.

This is the internet folks. We need to post linkies to these thingies.

 

The Rusterminator

 

RustStop

 

The Electro-Shield

 

Since our old scoobies are rust buckets, I'm surprised I haven't read about this before, or at least more of it.

 

Get'em while they are hot!

The NPR Car-Talk guys get questions about this thing all the time. They're of the opinion that it's junk.