Was cleaning my car yesterday and noticed a tiny and I mean tiny spot of rust on the roof, where it meets the top of the windscreen it's only four years old, any ideas on how to stop the evilness from spreading?

Mike

Also I bought a second hand afterburner exhaust on here, that seems to have rust spots on it to, are these cleaned off easily????

 

scrape off all the rust and paint it with rust preventer, then colour asap.
Autosol for the exhaust.

Dipster

 

Mines got it too, but as a result of some di*khead windscreen replacement "specialist". Looks like he's scratched the suface of paint below the windscreen rubber, and now a patch of surface bubble rust has developed. Subaru obviously wont cover it under warranty, and its a windscreen out job Good luck

 

Yep, had that on my MY98. It had a windscreen replacement sometime and as the last reply said, the installer scratched the paint around the screen. It affected near my ariel as well. They had to remove the screen - fortunately without breaking it as they said may happen - and the interior trim etc. Just to cheer you up, the total cost with spraying the roof etc. was £550 !! Mine had spread gradually until I couldn't live with it any longer.

 

I had to attend to a small spot on roofline recently, probably a stone-chip. So I chipped away at surrounding paint carefully using a clean fine screwdriver until edges of rust area exposed (so you have a circle of non-rusty metal - you could protect surrounding paint area with masking tape in case your hand slips. Then carefully scrape any loose rust away before painting rust and metal to edge of paint with a rust convertor (touch up applicator with tiny fine brush iin lid is best) - then allow rust and metal to turn blue showing that rust has been nuetralised - then use proper Subaru touch up paint to cover (available from dealer). You will not get a fantastic finish with touch up paint but it looks better superficially and is the lesser of two evils - rather have paint splodge than allowing the rust to run riot in all directions under the paint surface until a huge spidery area starts to bubble up etc.

 

If it goes UNDER the windscreen rubber, you can slow down the spread as others have mentioned BUT because it is probably actually spreading out from a place you cannot reach under the rubber and possibly is now on the inside of the roof...... the best solution is to have it done properly (screen out etc) if you intend keeping the car. If you reckon you'll only have the vehicle for a year or so, then you can slow down the inevitable until it is someones elses problem. The cost to fix it would not be recovered in a sale - people will probably think its a stone chip, anyway.
So..... a "Dremel" type mini grinder will take out the rust you can get to, I found, and being so small doesn't go skating off over your roof. Follow that with anti-rust acid based fluid (jenolite or similar) dribbled into it, followed by primer with a toothpick, follower by touch-up paint with a toothpick.
Eat a chicken to practise with the 'pick.