At my work my co workers decided to play a joke. Outside there is an old very heavy metal trash can and they placed it on top of my car. It put scratches on the roof of my car. I don't care about the scratches, but what I really care about is rust. There seems to be a rustic brown spot where one of the scratches are. I took a picture but the camera doesn't really show the brown spot. I took it to a body shop and asked someone working there if it was rust, he said it was just a scratch. But I don't understand why there is a brown like color that won't come off. I explained to him the practical joke my co workers played on me, but I don't think he understood what I was saying because he didn't understand english that good(and I don't speak it that good ether). Is it possible it could be rust? I am scared to death my investment(car) could be ruined.

 

It's probably just the primer they sprayed on before the paint.

 

thats not a scratch thats down to the metal its down to primer, there is not rust there yet and i dont think there will be any

 

If you have a scratch on the paint that's deep enough it might show Rust. However, it's just surface rust. Remember that when you scratch paint down to the metal, mix some surface humidity=Surface Rust.. Now Don't panic. Surface rust and Rust (AKA)cancer from years and years on a car are different( well same but just years and years of neglect). All I would do is maybe get some polish and elbow grease. It will disapear. I would recomend also adding some wax to inhibit the rust from coming back. One of my neighbors took out his mailbox and scrathed the paint.After 2 days of morning dew on it it had some rust. We polished the paint and then I threw liquid glass and it hasn't come back.

 

I thought I read somewhere that Volvo used mostly galvanized steel or aluminum? Maybe that was just for the S80...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanized

In any case, by the time that scratch causes any real damage the car will probably be ready for the scrap yard anyways, IMHO. If you're worried about it that much then just have the car painted. Shouldn't cost more than a couple hundred or so to fix.

 

hmm... right now the car has 153,000 miles on it. I bought it a year ago for $4k and invested $2,200.00 fixing it up with mechanical repairs. I didn't want to go in depth financing a new car, so I went this route instead. I am hoping this could be my car for at least the next 5 years(be great if even more). Do you think it won't last that long?

 

As long as you keep up the maintenance schedule, you should be fine! I wouldn'teven put any other thought on the rust as long as you wax that either!