[Ruediger]

ACF–50 is made in USA and perhaps somebody of you being a pilot or knowing some body who owns an aircraft already knows this product.

http://www.corrosion-control.com/acf50.html

Lotus is using it to treat minor cases of corroded foot wells but I feel that it may also be good to protect the Elise against aluminium corrosion especially when being driven on salty winter roads.

Hope to get some feedback

Ruediger

 

[Nick]

interesting

the car has been out in Europe since 1995. There are no reports of the frame being a problem.

Salt water is probably the worst thing for aluminum corrosion, on sail boats the masts are usually aluminum. There are some cleaning products and sometimes people would get them anodized.

The only time I have seen aluminum failer on a boat is through electrolysis. That was a tiller head snapped after being in the water for about five years.

The aluminum on the masts does pit slightly and it can be cleaned. Never saw it as a real issue. If it was a problem we would be hearing from Northern Europeans.

Hope this sheds some light.

have fun

Nick

 

[J-Son]

so this would have to be applied under the car? or in the passenger section of the car? i would think under the car...but then again who would drive an Elise in the winter with snow/sand/ice on the road?? i doubt the tires would do very well with traction.

 

[zvezdah1]

ruc,
some have been applying this to the footwells in the passenger compartment, varying degrees of corrosion have been reported in europe and rest of world. Lotus eventually determined it was the material the floor mats were made of in many cases.

They issued a press release last year recommending to check under the mats from time to time. The US cars (and assume rest of world now too) have a gray mat of some type of material which is attached to the floor pan where the mats go, assume this is something to help prevent the corrosion.
Chris

 

[ekological]

I saw the gray mat when I removed the floor mats to clean and prep the car for delivery to its new home. Do you have the touring package? I suspect that it's more of a sound deadening material than anything aimed towards corrosion.

 

[Ruediger]

I know that aluminium is used for boats because it does not corrode like back steel and osmosis is not a problem either.

[imghttp://img95.exs.cx/img95/552/Alu-Schiff.jpg[/img]

The guy who build this ship hates painting it every year.

But aluminium is not aluminium and crevice corrosion and pitting are known aluminium problems as they are for stainless steel.

Lotus took a very long time until they found a cure for the corroded foot wells and some of the European Elise drivers use their cars also in winter.

You can also get snow tires for the Elise.

But there have been reports that corrosion then becomes a special problem not only in the foot wells.
Next spring you will have got some experiences in the US, too.

Wait and see.

Ruediger

 

[Ruediger]

The ship was slower. I `ll try it again:

 

[Stan]

FWIW the USA car has an 8 year corrosion warranty but the car has to be inspected annually.