Corrosion Protection of Car Bodies in Finland

In the beginning of the 1980:ies automotive manufactures begun to offer warranties against corrosion partly due to the Canadian Anticorrosion Code. This led also in Finland to a new legislation on the corrosion protection of motor vehicles. The law came into force in 1982 and the requirements took effect in the beginning of the year 1984. The main difference between the Canadian Code and the Finnish law is that the former requires the automotive manufacturer to give a warranty while the latter binds the manufacturer to carry out certain anti-corrosion operations. The requirements are based on the experiences on the after market anti-rust protection measures taken during more than 30 years in Finland. The main requirements for the anti-rust agents are the corrosion resistance, the cold resistance and the penetration ability. On the basis of the experiences gathered by inspecting car bodies protected against corrosion by the manufacturer and also after market anti-rust protected bodies it can be stated that the cold resistance of anti-rust agents among some other items should be improved further. In the near future the new coated sheet materials used for the corrosion protection of car bodies will inevitably influence also the Finnish legislation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a general overview of the history of protection of car bodies and the legislation concerning corrosion protection of motor vehicles in Finland. Also the experiences and results of some laboratory tests are discussed.