Quote:
Originally Posted by NOHOME
Lack of concern and a new car every ten years.
They should hold up fine for the fist five years assuming that you do an oil-spray in the fall. Then you will get a gradual decline with a bit of rust perforation popping up here and there over the next five.
By year ten, its pretty much a beater.
I have a theory that washing cars in the winter makes them rust faster. So I don't.
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I hate to say it, but that's been pretty much my experience. My Mercedes and BMW vehicles have FAR outlasted my Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Land Rover vehicles, and most of that was because they seemed to be more impervious to rust. Hand washing my vehicles in below 0F weather was never something I was willing to do. Some I took to drive through car washes; those bodies may have lasted longer, but the frames seemed to fare worse. Others I didn't wash at all.. the bodies showed rust earlier, but the undercarriage seemed to fare better. My theory is that the high pressure streams actually forced the salt deeper into crevices.. who knows.
You really can't protect a car from salt completely. "Rust-proofing" coatings, at least in my experience, are pretty redundant when applied to a brand new car. When applied to a car that's already had a season of salt, they just trap any beginning corrosion inside the coating so you can't see it happening. Rust-preventing electronic systems are total crap on cars. There's far too many rubber and/or poly components to a car that, as a byproduct, electrically isolate parts of the car from each other that you'd need to run a SNOTLOAD of wires to make sure that every single piece of metal on the car had a path to ground before those systems would work. Of course, this is the internet. You can find a huge amount of testimony to the fact that those systems work great, too. Personally, I'll listen to the engineers before I'll listen to the salesmen or those trying to validate their purchases.
So, yeah... If you really care, get a $1500 winter rat and keep your car out of salt. OR.. accept the fact that your car will get eaten in 10 years or so, and live with it. I've gone both routes. These days, I'm happier maintaining fewer cars and just accepting the salt damage.
BArry