My first job after high school was at the chevy dealer in wolfboro and of course as the new guy got stuck whenever someone bought the undercoating. I think we were a franchise of rusty jones or one of those. Anyway, there was a book about how to do it and a test of like 10 questions to become "certified"
Back then cars were painted stamped steel. There was almost no aluminum and certainly no plastic and nothing was galvanized. The main enemy was water settling into the lower seams of the door, rockers, fenders and the pinch welds in the body or uni body. The point of the goop was to fill those seams to prevent water from laying in there so we had a bunch of long nozzles with special bends to get into the nooks and crannies. We would drill some holes in certain areas and fill them with plastic plugs. The bottom floor pan was covered too but that would almost never rust anyway since it would get rinsed in the rain and could dry.
certainly a modern car could benefit from this at least a little but generally does not seem worth it and I don't know if dealers even still push this; it was almost an automatic back in the 70s and 80s.
One of my friends bought a new truck in about 1980 and I came in saturday to do his undercoating for a discount. I'm sure I used about double the regular amount so that truck lasted and was still driving around town about 25 years later without a speck of rust.
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