I have to agree, I have seen higher mileage e-coat frames from the same region and the wheelwells, etc are immaculate. for a truck with 100K miles, it looked like it lived on the bottom of the ocean for a year.

 

yeah- living in the salt belt, believe me, the ecoat holds up much better than the old wax coatings. My 96 has been plowing and parked daily on dirt since new- up here you don't see 11 year old plow trucks in the condition my ram is still in- they're all rotted away while mine is just starting in the door bottoms and front drivers fender lip. Ecoat is a definite improvement.

 

Well MY wax coat frame is rust-free.

We're talking about frames here. Doesn't apply to wheel wells, doors, or fenders. So all those rotted trucks you guys are talking about have nothing to do with the frame.

 

Um, the e coat vs wax coat applies to the whole underside- if you're frame is fine but your floor pan is shot the wax saved you nothing.....

Besides, as far as the weather in Bakersfield the only thing attacking your truck is salt air... compare that to a New England truck and you'll have a rusted out hulk with a few bits of wax remaining.

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I do know that an e-coat process requires the part to be dipped into the paint. It would be tough to dip just the bottom half of trucks. My 94has 220K of salt and 3 years of plowing under its belt and my frame is still looking pretty darn good. Nothing is rotting away , just light surface rust and it isn't even the bright stuff. How the vehicle was taken care of while in the salt belt has a great affect as well.

 

Spent some time under my made in Mexico 97 today, and it appears to me to have the e-coat on its frame. There is a black finish on the entire frame that looks similar to the blue on a firearm, it doesn't appear to be painted on and I don't believe its wax.

The truck has not been driven much during the winter months, so there is almost no corrosion at all on the frame or the underside of the truck. The underside sheet metal appears to have only paint on it.

 

While true washing the truck will prolong it in a salt environment- most plowers do not. Matt, while you live in the salt belt, remember the 3 years of plowing on your truck is the equivalent of 10 years of normal vehicle driving winters- plows drive in the worst salt conditions- the slush created when the roads are being salted.

If you have wax you'll know it- it doesn't look or behave like paint- it looks and behaves like wax- it's soft and easy to dig your fingernail into.

Actually, the E-coat is short for electro-deposit. The chassis is run through a bath dip of cleaner then either dipped with a charge in a solution (like electro plating, or sprayed with charged paint- as in the chassis is connected to a neg pole and the gun is positive (current flows from pos to neg) kind of like powder coating. The charge on the chassis makes the coating adheare better AND draws it into the cracks and crevices regular painting would not.