Funny to see an old thread like this resurrected and all the various postings.
Some interesting things to consider.
Having worked in the automotive industry in my youth for many years, I have seen many of the recommendations used with varying degrees of success.
In the end the one that is probably most accurate today (not so in the past) is that you probably dont need to do anything to a modern car except to go through a car wash that does undercarriage washing on a regular basis.
One thing to absolutely avoid is used motor oil. During the process if lubricating your motor, its oil becomes contaminated with acids, acids that will actually compete with the oil to rust your car. It will literally depend on whether the inhibitors added to the oil are still effective or not. Hard used oil will not be a good choice.
Some of the other solutions are novel, but not really good choices. Some have solvents in them making detrimental to your goal. Some are too "thin" and will just run off quickly, and in truth all oils will simply run off over time and need to be reapplied regularly.
Old school rubberized or tar-like products do exactly as someone said, they trap water and cause rust. Not really a good choice overall.
Fluid Film and other similar products work reasonably well if you can really get it applied in the nooks and crannies, but you will still have to re-apply them at some point.
Most interesting is that the majority of what is discussed is not chemically engineered as a rust inhibitor or metal protectant.
Rust inhibitors have varying success over time, and metal protectants are limited by the condition of the metal at the time of application and the viscosity and "waxiness" of the material.
At one job in a machine shop we used a thin waxy oil coating to protect recently machined bare metal. It offered a good shelf life of maybe a year.
And anyone who has seen military or marine metal items stored knows the value of cosmoline. Thats is probably the very best spray-on option you will find and the biggest nightmare to get off you will encounter. Maybe second to cosmoline is LPS #3, its really good stuff. Both are pricey. Fluid film and others are good and less of a pain to remove should you need to.
So many good products out there like Waxoline and others, but in the end I am not 100% convinced you are almost better to just wash it as often in the winter as weather will allow and just get the salt off and let dry before the next freeze. If thats not going to be an option then shop around for one of the better products, but not used motor oil.
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