Vactan. Is it really good?

[Nicola&Tony]

Again there seems to be confusion here with rust remover and rust stabiliser. They are not the same thing.

Now that's a statement which had me confused so I did some googling. On the Frost site, on a page about Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator I came across this statement:

"Silver Rust encapsulator Aerosol stabilises rust and prevents futher rusting. It can be used where rust cannot be removed. Can be top coated with virtually all paint systems."
link to relevant Frost page

So some "rust treatments" are designed to make it easier to remove the rust rather than stabilise it? A rust stabiliser will stop a rusty patch getting bigger?

Vactan is a stabiliser?

It'd be really useful to have a list in the Wiki of which products are removers and which are stabilisers, there's so many products out there it's a nightmare trying to decide which to use.

Tony

[Adrian244]

Unless you have no choice, grinding back cutting out and replacing the metal is the only way to really stop it. Anything else is just halting progress. Which yes is OK so long as it's not under a tidy paint job in an obvious place. You knows it makes sense (sorry a bit of Gavin and stacy there - time for bed)
Or you selling the van oops sorry

[CovKid]

I'm with Adrian on this, always replace where you can and yes not all these treatments do the same thing. Even using Vactan I still get out as much rust and show as much bare metal as practically possible but it does work for sure and like I say, great for minor scrapes or stonechips too. Theres nothing around that you can just paint on rust and stop it completely. Bare steel likes to oxidise from the moment its manufactured, its simple as that. If that were not the case there would be little need for scrapyards.

Believe it or not, tannin, an ingredient of tea, will also halt rust if you want to try household remedies. I remember trying this out some years ago with damp tea bags and it turns the rust black like many proprietry treaments. That said I've found the vactan invaluable. The only times it has failed for me was where I wasn't able to get to all sides/faces of the offending area.