oliver foster

Most people get 8 / 10 years before their cars/trucks will not pass the state yearly inspections around here. If you really work at it with oil under coats and the like, you can get a few more.
ANY surface rust holes are enough to fail you here in VT, EVEN one in the truck bed.

j_martin

I have a hard time understanding what body rust has to do with safety. I could see doors too rusty to function, or floorboards that kids and pets could fall through, but a dime sized hole in a rocker panel?

diesel402004

Back when I lived on the Beast Coast in the late 70s they used to inspect the vehicles twice a year. Is that still the norm?

City Rat

Once a year inspection here in VA.

ARCHIVE

Evaporust does work and work well, actually a good option for OP. Then a coating of grease, white lithium spray grease, or similar

maybe368

RuuUUST?? That does not compute Will Robinson. I highly suggest moving to Arizona where rust is considered to be a conspiracy theory. ...Mark

james1

Thanks to all. There are some enormously helpful suggestions here.

I confess the truck with the issues is my new daily driver, a ricer. I was determined to find myself a single-cab manual tranny truck -- which are now (sadly) essentially extinct. A new one not being an option, I found a very low mileage 2013 Taco at a Toyota dealer in North Carolina. I bought the truck sight unseen, never dreaming it had spent its first three years in Syracuse . But if I can tame the surface rust I should be good for another 20 years here in Georgia. My CTD has no rust whatsoever.

I know posing questions not related to CTDs may run afoul of forum rules, but as John Martin commented to me a few months back, "this forum feels like family." I agree wholeheartedly and I respect the advice I receive here; I trust the administrators will forgive me .

Again, thank you all.

City Rat

Well, look at it this way, that same truck, basically, on all other continents is called a Hilux by Toyota and is a diesel. Those get rust too so I'm sure that was all in the back of your mind when you were trying to pose this question. Add to that I just heard that both 2016-2017 Toyotas and Nisan trucks would be rolling out with Cummins diesels as an engine option, soooo you're still kinda sorta in the family ballpark.

Richie O

I bought my 93 from the original owner who I knew well and the truck was 9 years old at 120k and it was not road worthy. Holes the size of basketballs in floor, cab fallen down to the frame rails, spring hangers swiss cheese, pure junk. Frame rusted through, bottom webb by fuel tank was gone for about 3 feet. I had a 96 gmc plow truck with 60 k on it that was 10 years old and the carpet fell through the floor onto the exhaust system and caught fire.

bannerd

Rust tends to grow and eat when it has air available. The best way is to stop it is with zinc spray paint and spray that to bare metal. Before you apply it to bare metal heat it with propane and get the water out of the metal. Then apply the zinc (cold galvanized paint) to the area.

After that paint over it with whatever paint you want. Then before the salt hits the road use cosmoline all over the underbody. FF inside things like the doors roof lines etc. This is what they use on the state trucks here and they do pretty well on the butt end when salt is spread all over the place. The new trucks have calcium tanks on the sides (Or beat juice) which is making it worse when mixed with the salt.

Alec

Liquid calcium chloride and Beet Juice are NOT the same thing. CaCl is horrible stuff.

Beet Juice is supposed to be fully biodegradable and non-corrosive. The active compounds are similar to alcohol. But I have never lived anywhere where it was used as a road treatment. I was encouraged to use it as ballast in tubeless tractor tires.

Sorry for the diversion, I just wanted to make the distinction between the two liquid road treatments.

Rick 12v CTD

in all honesty, once rust has set its seeds on the metal (rust from the rust belt aka salt roads and wet conditions, sand chipping the paint etc) it is darn near impossible to eliminate completely without just getting new sheet metal (on the body). As for diff and frame, thorough pressure washing/cleaning then a hefty amount of sand blasting followed by a good chassis paint should do the trick there. The key to getting rid of rust, is getting rid of every last speck of it on the bare metal.

MrFusion

Have you ever used this product on a frame that was already rusty? I did some research on it and it sort of sounds like spray on cosmoline.

MrFusion

T-man, if you had it to do over again would you skip all of the paint/RC options and just spray the rusty frame with grease/bar oil? At this point sand blasting to bare metal and painting isn't a viable option for me.

The big advantage that I can see to using an oil spray is that it should help keep all of the bolts etc from rust welding themselves. The other advantage seems to be that it is much less prep work than paint or RC. The disadvantage is having to do it repeatedly.

One thing that has concerned me with using Chassis Saver is that any bolts that it gets on will be almost impossible to remove later.

My dilemma is that once I coat the frame with grease it will be 10x more work to clean it if i ever decide to use a RC.

What are your thoughts on it? For instance would you use RC then spot treat with grease as necessary or just use grease from the start?

bannerd

Without air.. rust cannot grow. You could take a piece of rusty metal and dip the entire thing in wax and throw it out in the woods. Said metal would last forever until the wax coating is breached. Once the coating is breached you need to remove all of it and respray.

I've used POR15 on a customers dakota. It was 5 days in prep work, sand blasting the frame, removing the bed, sand blasting that. Pressure washing, using acid etch and then applying the POR15 (one day). It lasted two years in the salt belt before the POR literally started to flake off in large chunks. POR15 tries the same concept, get the air away from the metal. Fluid film is okay, it comes off way to easy, though. Cosmoline sticks around but the wax can be breached(easy fix, spray on top of it). Wurth wax and SKS is good, I have SKS on my truck and it is still there. The issue is I don't know what is happening underneath it.

Honestly, hands down, the best rust protection is some zinc enriched spray then some paint over that. Moisture makes its way behind the paint and it bubbles. This is just a flag to wire wheel the area and treat both sides of it. It can bubble if a rock hits it and breaches the surface. Maybe the back side had a pin hole, wasn't treated and pushed it out through the paint on the other side.

Get some krud kutter rust converter, let the acid do the work and then treat with zinc and spray paint. One thing about grease, if you spray that on body panels and you run body filler or fiber glass resin on the otherside. If there is a pin hole the oil will literally go into the body filler and the paint will not stay. Been there, done that