Best, cheapest way to remove rust from car?

Retrogamer wrote: »

It'll stop it for a few months if you're lucky.

I removed rust from my wheels using an angle grinder with wire wheel to bring them back to the bare metal then painted with Hammerite direct to rust paint.
Stored them in my shed for a few months (winter tyres on them) and they had rusted through again.

Nah i've got big patches of the stuff all over my rusty garage door (which needs replacing if anyone know's somebody cheap ).
My first car (Austin Metro) was practically held together with the stuff, my Kitcar has all it on the trackrod arms, my Vectra has it on one small spot on the bodywork where I found rust bubbling up a few years ago.

It works by entirely stopping air getting to the metal, rusting of steel is an electrochemical process accelerated by carbonic acid (which acts as an electrolyte), carbonic acid forms when rain water absorbs carbon.... Blah blah etc etc (boring stuff).

Your wheels, I don't know, complex shape, plenty of area's where rust could remain untouched, possibly even damp, but they certainly wouldn't have been made of the same grade steel as a cars bodywork.
I've had times where rust has come through, but i've never been able to look back and say "I don't understand, I though I did a really good job of that".

I admit it's not permanent, eventually after a few years or so, it's going to need attention again, simply because when you put two different materials together, they react differently to stress/heat/cold and eventually crack.

The only thing with hammerite is you'll ruin a paint brush every time you use it, because the thinners is so expensive that nobody ever buys it..... But you can buy Xylene (the active ingredient in hammerite thinners) nice and cheap from medical/chemical suppliers.

Rain_Shadow wrote: »

I always cleaned my brushes in in plain old cellulose thinners and it took Hammerite out no problem. A five litre can from a paint factor was dirt cheap. That was about 10-15 years ago. I'm not sure if the regulations allow the sale of thinners to joe public in those quantities now.

At some point Hammerite changed their formula (perhaps just before they released the new thinners at a near extortionate price?). Have you tried it recently at all?