Krown Rustproofing

[Top_Fuel]

Oil-based rustproofing has been popular in Canada for years. If you aren't familiar with it, here's how it works. Instead of using traditional undercoating as a moisture barrier, the inside of your body panels and bottom of your car are coated with an oil-based mixture which clings to the surface and displaces moisture.

Krown is the best-known brand name in Canada for this type of rustproofing. Here's how they describe their product...

What is Krown?

Krown is not an 'oil spray' as such. It is a complex mixture of chemicals designed to slow down or inhibit corrosion on vehicles. It is a petroleum-based product, heavily fortified with rust inhibitors. Krown contains no solvents, kerosene, gasoline, no paraffin or wax, no lanolin, no toxic chemicals, nothing of a cancer causing nature, no aggressive chemicals of any kind.

How does it work?

Krown is sprayed in every corner of the vehicle and as it contacts metal it bonds an ‘oily’ type film tenaciously to the metal. It ‘creeps’ into tight seams and crevices and will physically lift moisture off the metal and expel it. It then continues to repel moisture by setting up a moisture resistant bond on the surface of the metal. Krown is not water soluble and will not wash off bare metal with water or soaps. It would take fairly aggressive chemicals to take the product off bare metal. If a product will not displace and repel moisture, it cannot do an effective job in controlling corrosion.

You can see a 2 minute Krown animation demo video here:





Krown is slowly entering the US market, so there aren’t many dealers around. I was surprised to find a Krown shop only 50 miles away from me in west/central Ohio. It turns out this was the first authorized Krown dealer in the US.



Here’s an overview of the Krown process as it was done to my Mirage:


The car is driven onto a 4 post lift so it can be raised in the air for easy access to the bottom of the vehicle.



If the bottom of the car has evidence of salt deposits from previous winter road treatments, they may suggest cleaning it with MR35 “salt eliminator” before the Krown application is done. This soapy solution is sprayed on the bottom of the car and removed with a pressure-washer. My car was new, so I didn’t need this. I think there may be a small additional charge for this MR35 service if you need it.

Next, they open your hood, hatch and doors to identify and access the areas where Krown needs to be applied.



If some panels of the car can’t be accessed by the spray tools (inside doors, rocker panels, etc.), they will drill a few 3/8” holes in these areas to allow access for proper treatment. Don’t panic…they only make holes where/when necessary. If they can reach a panel by spraying through existing weep holes, that's what they'll do. By the way…any holes they make are made with a special sheet-metal bit. They aren’t using a traditional drill bit that might walk and scratch your paint.

Below are the exact spots where holes were put in my car. In some areas, holes aren’t necessary to gain access to the inside of the panel. For example, the back side of the Mirage’s front fenders are easily accessed just by popping the hood. On the hatch, they just removed the 2 rubber bumpers and that gave them easy access to spray.

[ I will post these pics later ]

Once any holes are made, the Krown application begins. They use different length application rods which spray the Krown Rust Protectant material in all directions from the tip of the rod. The material comes out of the tip in a mist/vaporized form. The application rod is inserted into each hole and moved around inside the length of the panel to ensure complete coverage. This results in the interior of each panel (and everything inside the panel) being coated with the product.

Some specific areas of the engine compartment (tops of strut towers, battery area, etc.) are also sprayed. They don’t hose down the engine with the material…the application under the hood is in targeted areas only.

Once the body panels have been treated, any access holes that were made are plugged with rubber plugs.

The vehicle is then raised in the air. At this point, they use a tool that looks like a paint gun and literally “paint” the entire floor pan of the car with the product…



Then they switch back to using the spray rods to reach tight places like the strut towers, suspension parts, inside any frame rails, brake lines, fuel lines, etc. They took their time and went out of their way to make sure everything was covered.



Once the bottom side of the car is done, the car is lowered back down to the ground. They apply a soapy solution to the windows and use a power sprayer to rinse the exterior of the vehicle so any excess Krown material is removed. Note: Krown will not harm your paint. At this point, the job is complete. This entire process took about an hour for my Mirage.

I don’t know how much material they use during a typical application, but I’m estimating that they used roughly a gallon to do my Mirage.

I was impressed with the product and its application…especially since the price is a reasonable $119 (I think there’s a $10 off coupon on the Krown website if you want to save a few bucks).


Random Observations:

You might be wondering about the product dripping out of the body panels after the application. Here’s the deal…this stuff WILL drip from the lowest orifice in each body panel for at least a week. The dripping spots are pretty heavy for the first couple of days...then it slows down. I think it took my car a month to completely stop. You either need to park in the street for a couple of days or park on top of a plastic drop cloth in your garage after this is done.

If you’re wondering how thick this material is, I would say it’s the consistency of a heavy weight oil. It's so thick it has to be heated to approximately 90 degrees so it will flow and vaporize through the application sprayers. This stuff is absolutely not like WD-40, which almost has the consistency of water in its normal form.

My car was done in April when it was fairly cool outside. Two months later when we started getting higher summer temperatures, the product began seeping from the holes at the bottoms of the doors again. So it’s safe to assume that once Krown has been applied and the outside temperatures get colder, the product isn’t going anywhere. I could still see occasional signs of this stuff coming from the holes at the bottoms of the doors after 6+ months…but I’m perfectly fine with that!

A yearly re-application is recommended. I’m guessing this stuff could remain intact on interior body panels for years. The coating on the bottom of the car may wear away after a year of exposure. If you want to save a few dollars, you could probably pick up a couple of spray cans of Krown (which includes a spray tube like cans of WD-40) and perform a basic re-treatment yourself. The access holes will already be there to use. The shop where I had this work done sells cans of Krown, or you can buy them on-line.


Here is the shop I used...

Go-Krown
9445 Horner Road
Versailles, Ohio, 45380
https://www.gokrown.com/

I would absolutely recommend this shop. The business has 1 employee...who is also the owner. Krown application is all he does. He owned an auto repair business for many years, but has "retired" and now Krown is his only business.

Here's a video of an application being done. The owner does all of the work. He’s a super-nice guy and was more than happy to let me watch the entire process and answer my questions.





If you have questions, check out the Krown FAQ


EDIT July 2020:

I thought I would post these pics. I haven't washed my car for a few months now. That's not good...but it gives you a chance to see how the Krown material migrates out of the body panels. My car was last treated with Krown over 9 months ago.

You can see signs of it near the bottoms of the doors...



And you can see it coming out from behind my side marker lights...

[Daox]

Great review!

What do they do to the drilled holes to prevent rust there? The cut metal edge will not be primed or painted, but bare metal. Do they coat it with the Krown product?

[Top_Fuel]

What do they do to the drilled holes to prevent rust there...Do they coat it with the Krown product?

The holes are filled with rubber plugs. That's one of the pictures I'm missing right now.

They don't specifically cover the bare metal edges of the holes with the product, but I think the product tends to try to leak out of the holes and gathers around the plugs. I regularly knock a plug or two out when I wipe down my door jambs after a car wash. I haven't seen any sign of rust from the hole edges.

Actually...my only complaint about the whole deal is that the plugs can fall out if you run a towel over them. I have considered getting stiffer plugs that are harder to remove. They don't glue/silicone the plugs in place because they need to remove them the next time you come in for your annual treatment.

EDIT - I've had my car back for a re-application twice since I originally posted this. They switched to a new style of plug for the holes. The new plugs require significant effort to remove...which is good!

[Johnny Mullet]

I am doing this to my Mirage this or next weekend depending on the weather. I will be using a product called RustAvert.............
http://www.lesfrickshun.com/rustavert.html

I work at a diesel garage and we replace a lot of rear bumpers on semi-trailers. We treated the last 3 we did 2 years ago and they are still looking great. This stuff was only applied once and not multiple times. I can't find much info on this stuff online, but it seems to work great. Sprays on in a mist/paste like substance and creeps into the nooks and crannies. It then hardens up like a waxy substance and sticks well without peeling or cracking.

[Top_Fuel]

...I will be using a product called RustAvert...
...Sprays on in a mist/paste like substance and creeps into the nooks and crannies.
...It then hardens up like a waxy substance and sticks well without peeling or cracking.

That sounds like a cool product. Let us know how it works out...or maybe snap a few pics during the process.

[kevhaw]

Back in 1991 when I bought a 2 year old Honda Civic, I used Krown. For many years I had the car done each year and my Honda was in "show room" condition. For some reason, I think after 15 years I was getting depressed over the large repair bills that were popping up... I had to rebuild the transmission and replace the motor with a used one from Japan... I stopped doing my yearly Krown treatments. I was okay for a couple of years, then the rust started. By the time the car was rear-ended and written off, the wheel wells were very rusty as were the door bottoms. The moral to this story is it does work- but if you stop, after awhile the rust will start. I think you could possibly get by doing it every other year, as as you mentioned, buy a can and spray some areas yourself. One thing though... one year I did use a coupon and I noticed that at the shop I used, they cut back on the amount of product used. They didn't spray much under the car, for example, my gas tank started to rust, and they didn't do the hatch area at all. I had to bring the vehicle back and ask them to do it. I'm sure not all shops try to recoup the cost of the coupon this way- ha ha!

[Eggman]

Krown is the best-known brand name in Canada for this type of rustproofing. Here's how they describe their product...

Thanks for sharing this. It reminds me of cosmolene.

[kevhaw]

One thing that I just remembered....the product is a little tough on soft rubber molding or gaskets, like the rubber moldings along your car door, or under the hood to block water. I remember a few areas of the molding came loose and would sag or hang, around the doors. Small trade-off for the protection. (Also hard rubber molding like at the edge of the hood would warp a bit and not fit as snuggly.)

I was looking at a used Honda Fit- 2009- and could spot rust in the corner of the wheel wells. Not surface rust, real "rust through" corrosion. So cars that aren't cared for still rust even though they are supposed to be much more impervious to rust these days.

If I land a Mirage some day I will be using Krown too

[Top_Fuel]

...So cars that aren't cared for still rust even though they are supposed to be much more impervious to rust these days.

I'm still amazed when I see newer cars with rockers completely rusted away...or holes by the rear wheel wells. The sheet metal on new cars is so thin, that by the time you see rust bubbling through paint, the entire panel is probably toast underneath.

[Eggman]

Also hard rubber molding like at the edge of the hood would warp a bit and not fit as snuggly.

Snuggly is a funny word.