hey blue. Although the idea of non-pollution is a good one, but the fact of the matter is this. A good portion of the cars on the road use oil. Both these and the ones that don't ride on tar for roads, use tires, grease, and a half dozen other polluting materials to get down the road. The amount of pollution that an oil-undercoating will add to the environment for those that care enough about their vehilce to do it is of little or no consequence. I see your point that we should make no moves to pollute that we don't have to, but the way I see it this practice for the five hundred people that care will have little effect on the environment.
The other idea that we may be missing here is if you are going to all the trouble to clean the underside of the car and put on the oil undercoating, why not take a little more time and just paint the underside of the car. It dosen't have to be professionally done. This isn't a show-stopper we're talking about here. A few days and half a dozen cans of rust-stop paint should do the trick. Then you won't have to re-do the work, just clean it up and touch up every once in a while.

 

I have yet to find a rust stop paint that actually does any good if there already is some rust on the metal.

Compared to the amount of oil dripping from engines on the millions of cars on the road, the amount getting into the environment from those who choose to oil undercoat their cars is trivial.

 

I believe that the oil making its way to the environment due to oil undercoating would not be trivial, it would be non existent. It is such a microscopic quantity, and even if it were more, it would NEVER make it more than a few inches past the edge of the road.

As rustyculley pointed out, junking a complete car once it has rusted beyond its usefulness, has FAR greater environmental impact than the very few drops of oil that it might have dropped along 100,000 miles of road. Even if the entire quart that it took to paint the bottom leaked onto the road, it would amount to probably one drop per mile. That said, if applied properly, NOT EVEN ONE DROP would come off the car.

Have a great day,
Doc

 

well not to be the devil's advocate or anything, but let's say that some oil gets into the inch or two beside the road. This gets into the roots of some plant, say a dandilion. It's not enough to hurt the dandilion. A moose comes along and eats a lot of the dandilion beside that particular road, and therefore picks up a lot opf the oil. Still not enough to hurt the moose, though. A bear comes along and eats the moose, and a few others that have been feeding in the area, and it gets more distilled shot of the oil. By now there may be enough to hurt the bear. and if you eat the bear, maybe enough to hyurt you. Don't get me wrong I think that the extra amount that we're dripping on the road is trivial as well, and that little of none of it will drip, due to the fact that oil isn't soluable in water, but we do have to keep the wildlife in consideratio when we make these kinds of decisions, as it comes back to us in the end. I think that's blue's argument.

 

If anybody's really concerned about oil on the road, we're all gonna have to quit driving engine-powered oil lubed vehicles. Try riding through a toll gate on a motorcycle sometime, the oil accumulation feels like you are on a skating rink, I've almost lost it a few times. Multiply that by the millions of miles of roads and millions of cars and trucks, there's probably shiploads of oil on our highways. Worrying about oil residue on the undercarriage is like ordering a diet coke after you just ate a 7 course meal to save calories.

I really don't think spraying a little oil on your chassis is gonna make a big dent, the stuff is hard as heck to get off if you don't want it there. BTW, I really enjoyed the old VW mechanic story, as bad as those things rust I'm sure it was the only way to keep em in one piece.

 

Please tell me when they declared rust as hazardous waste. Steel and iron are made from iron oxide and is all over the earth. The chemicals placed in motor oil are man made.
If the oil did not wash off, there would be no reason to have to spray it on again and again to protect the vehicle.
Oil may not be water soluble per se, but 1 quart of oil will polute 250k gallons of water.
Do some searches and some reading.

 

ok, well the only reason that the oil pollutes the water is in large volumes like you stated. It takes 250 gallons of water because if you have say a lake or pond and that much oil is on it any animals looking to pierce the surface will get oil on them. Oil isn't carried very well by eater in such places as streams and rivers due to it being on the surface of the water and not able to get anywhere else. It pollutes the ground a little, but I'm not as certain how that works.

 

That is not 250 gallons, that is 250,000 gallons.

 

Just because something is natural vs. man made, that doesn't necessarily mean anything with respect to environmental impact. For instance, crude oil is 100% natural, yet it's fairly toxic.

 

The toxic part about places like junk yards is not the metal. It is things like gas, oil, antifreeze, ATF, paint, and battery acid. Rust is nothing but iron oxide. The same thing that is used to make steel and iron.

 

Well, it looks like the only solution is to absolutely prohibit ANY vehicle on our roads with ANY oil leak WHATSOEVER. Come to think of it, I like that idea. It sure would eliminate the traffic problem.

Have a great day,
Doc

 

when i bought my truck it leaked oil real bad. finally it got to the point where it was leakin a quart every 300 miles so i rebuilt the engine. it leaked gallons of oil on the road. i cant believe you guys are arguing about minuscule amounts of oil from undercoating. the oil leaks on the average family sedan runnin down the interstate are vast amounts every day. just look at a parking lot-every front space has giagantic oil stains i dont even walk on-and were arguing about maybe less than drops? i'll challenge anybody who cares so much about the ecological damage of oil undercoating to go out and do something about the oil problem we already have - go clean parking lot spaces at supermarkets and gas stations, ect. im bein serious organise teams to go to businesses like the adopt a highway people who pick up trash along the road. i chalenge people to go out and do something about the problems, instead of just talking about it.

 

oldfordtrucksrule,

Well put!

Have a great day,
Doc

 

With 200 million cars on the road today, I don't think the use of used motor oil for undercoating would be an insignificant amount of pollution added to what we already have. If I have a choice of do nothing and don't pollute at all or do something and pollute even a little, my choice would be do nothing. I sincerely hope everyone doesn't start thinking it's insignificant for that kind of stuff or we will all be buried in trash and worse on our highways and cities.

 

As rustycully pointed out, replacing the whole car due to it rusting out prematurely has much more environmental impact than the VERY few drops of oil that would be scattered over thousands of miles of road.

It takes SCADS of energy to build a car and provides a severe environmental problem every time one is junked.

No one here is just shrugging their shoulders and saying what the heck I'm just going to pollute because I can. The fact that we are discussing this shows that we are all concerned about the environment. What we ARE doing is discussing the OVERALL effect to the environment. You just can't look at such things individually, but rather what the net effect is of all things considered.

Have a great day,
Doc