Protecting your cement

Rusty67

Dirt-Old 20+Year Member
Dec 3, 2002
3,749
37
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Seattle area, WA
Whats the best thing to put down under my car to catch oil and other fluids my car may leak out ? The RV area on the side of our house is finally finished so I'm going to be moving my Mustang there. The only thing is I need to make sure that the cement stays relativly clean. No oil stains and such. I need to make sure what ever I put down stays put because there tends to be some serious wind around here at different times of the year.
 
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you could just use cement paint (i think you can get it in cement color if you want) but epoxy is better and with either you can just wipe up anything the car drips. If you want to go real cheap, we always just put cardboard under the cars and double or triple it up. you might have to put rocks on the sides to keep it from blowing away.
 
A large piece of exterior grade plywood, the woman that comes to babysit for our child while my wife and I work drives an older Acura Legend. This car leaks oil like none I've ever seen before. Up until we had the driveway paved, I couldn't care less, however now I do. I laid down a 4 x 4 sheet of plywood where she parks the car to protect the driveway, I tried a metal drip pan but it blew away during a storm with high winds, never had a problem with the plywood.
 
I would love to do epoxy but my parents are not going to go for it. They wanted me to do the garage with the epoxy, but for some reason they don't want me to do it outside.

That mat from California car cover is kewl but man it ain't cheap. The other problem with it is that it is too big, I couldn't work on the car with it underneath the car, at least not if I needed to jack the car up.

This stuff looked interesting but its basically glorified cardboard:
http://www.calcarcover.com/product.aspx?id=67&cid=30

I'm thinking of trying to find a big drip pan and locking it in place with some bricks. This would be so much easier if I could just epoxy the stupid area but NOOOOOO.
 
I used to have a "leaker" SUV. I used thick cardboard that our equiptment comes in at work and tied on two extra ten pound weights from an old barbel set. The cardboard would last a long time and the weights kept it from blowing away. Yes, I am cheap.
 
We have Ferro-Con paint on my machine shop floor. But you say the folks won't let you paint it....

Not trying to be an ass, but have you thought about fixing the oil leak instead? It would be better in the long run for everybody.

LOL
you are halarious man. That is actually great advice. I AM going to fix the oil leak... after I fix the fuel leak that just developed.... The leak is comming from the oil pan drain plug which seems to be common. The late model Mustangs have and integrated rubber washer and don't ever leak. I'm provably going to make somthing similar to that by welding a washer onto a bolt and then epoxy bonding a rubber gasket on there or something. Those stupid plastic crush washers are worthless. I'm in the process of puting together a new motor so I wont be needing this one for much longer but before I do that I'm going to work on the rear brake swap. It was nice and sunny but then it decided to rain again.

Basically the car is going to be out of commission for a while and fixing an oil leak isn't high on the list of stuff to do since it will be taken care of when I put in a new motor anyways. You could also call it me being a lazy bastard.
 
Yeah a fuel leak would definitely take priority. I think the best advice as all was the plywood. It looks a little better than a cardboard with rocks on it and is longer lasting. A 4x8 of ply is cheap. Where is the oil leak coming from, do you know?
 
Go to a resturant supply store and buy a couple of the large aluminum baking pans. I got a couple that are something like 2'x3' they are about half an inch deep so they catch and contain the leaked fluid and you can then pour it into a jar to dispose of it. And they can be cleaned up better than wood, and loock nider than cardboard. They are not very expensive either, I think lesst then $10 each.
 
Walley World should have a large 30" X 40" thin metal pan just for such things. Weight it with a couple of bricks so that the wind don't blow it. If they don't have it check a chain auto store. Nice to be able to look in pan and see whats leaking. I have several of these.