Fortunately, I live in a very dry area and park in a garage. Rust is not a great problem here. I once bought a car that had been in Michigan for part of its life and everything was rusty on that car, never again.

 

It does help to make sure the drains are clean on the bottom of the doors.

 

Knock on wood, but my Lumina has had rust on the bottom lip of each door since I bought the car in '06. It hasn't gone through to the outside yet, and this car has lived in Michigan it's whole life. Going on 12 years old... So I think we'll have a while until it rusts through on the HHR doors. Like hyper said, you just don't see it most of the time on other cars. I too have the issue though on my HHR doors, and I bought the car after it had only seen 2 winters... Sprayed some rust proofing in the doors, but really that's about all you can do.

 

My 2006 HHR had bubbles on the inside when I bought it last fall. I spray penetrating lubricant (similar to WD40) in the bottom drain holes every couple months. Hopefully this will slow the rust.

 

Yeah, we've always done that on our vehicles, and it seems to help at least! We'll even use cheap motor oil, and that gets it coated nice and good and will last a while.

 

It is actually a good use for used motor oil to use it as a rust prevention product..... needs to be used sparingly though as it can collect dust which over time can plug drain holes. This defeats it's purpose. I used to do this back in the 70's on my 442's (Yes I had several, that's plural for 442 )


By the way, My '07 HHR driven in Ohio it's whole life has yet to show any rust at the bottoms of the doors.

 

The holes in the HHR are pretty large and pretty hard to clog up like in the old days.

I used to find the biggest thing to clog drains used to be Zebart. I used to hear water in customers doors and most of the time it was the rust proofing that kept the water in.

As for oils Kerosene is why many old farm tractors are still in good shape. It is a light oild and holds little dirt. Many farmers used it for years to clean the tractor and in turn it prevented the rust. Good thing they chewd tobacco more than smoked.

 

Zeibart was bad but they didn't end up replacing some customer's cars like the Rusty Jones people did back in the early 80's. A liberal but careful application of used motor oil has always seemed to work the best, unless you dwell on the seacoast like my parents do, you can hear my Dad's Buick rusting on quiet nights.

 

There are options to "kill" rust..Some can be found @ www.eastwood.com
& they work..

 

I've never had any of that stuff that "kills" rust work. Rust is like a cancer...once it's there, it's virtually impossible to stop.