snow season and rusty cars

So, first winter in my new location and I came from a rust free zone...

I have two vehicles, one Sprinter Van, which is not known for having ANY rust protection, and one sports car with Ohlins suspension and other bits I would rather not ruin...

My question is (are), what are the methods the locals use to keep their vehicles from becoming crap rust buckets?
How long can the sludge of salt, or whatever crap is being put on the roads sit on your undercarriage before it needs to be cleaned or treated??

hondo my brudder, salt is sodium choride, less corrosive is potassium chloride,and for a binder calcium chloride wit a little grit

I thought it was magnesium chloride.

like Hondo says, just go thru a car wash that sprays the underside of the vehicle after the slop is off the streets.

Yep, any time you drive through a snow storm or a slushy road, WASH it afterwards. The $5 for the car wash is well worth it. Mag-chloride is some nasty shit. I wish CDOT had never heard of it!

And why would you ever think of driving the sports car with Ohlin's suspension in the snow/on slushy/wet winter roads? I would leave that car parked in he shed until it was a nice, dry day.

I spend way too many quarters at the self wash trying to keep that stuff off the vehicles. It seems to eat the aluminum like my swing arms the quickest.

Wash the piss out of it regularly but the part you can't do anything about is the mis-match in the electrical conductivity of the metals used in our rides. As Neil Young said: Galvanic corrosion is ceaseless.
I brought my pickup with me when I moved from Minnesota ( Rust Central) and the rust that it had got worse here, in spite of my efforts. Now I have a vehicle native to Colorado and after 13 years it still has no rust.

Mag Chloride--Any of a large class of chemical compounds formed when a positively charged ion (a cation) bonds with a negatively charged ion (an anion), as when a halogen bonds with a metal. Mg is an alkaline earth metal, bonded with chlorine, a halogen.

What we did is had our vehicles under coated at the Chevy Dealer here. I still wash then regularly, but with MgCl on the county roads in the summer(or any time it is wet), and the highway in the winter. It payed for me. Thing it was 200 a car.

Be aware some quarter type car washes recycle their water so you are could be forcing the corrosive water into cracks and crevices on your vehicles. It is a real pain but I try to wash mine in the drive whenever possible.

That is why I bought a nice pressure washer, for an under body was, I run the sprinkler under the pickups. Have one of those old tractor ones. I park the truck in the grass on the lane, and run it under. I slowly pull a smaller one under my wife's car. I do know that two of the car washes(we only have 3) here in Craig recycle their water for the wash cycles. Rinse is clean, but like he said, some of that corrosives can get in the tight spots.

Only reason the sporty car would be used is that I have a set of stock wheels that would be easy to mount dedicated snows on. Plus it has a very good limited slip, meaning it would have actual two wheel drive, where as the humungo van is essentially one wheel drive..

I did not think about the recycled water in the car washes with undercarriage jets.

One local self service car wash boasts a Mag Chloride cleaner in their offerings.

Back in the day (My dads day) my dad and uncle has matching '51 Ford's. This was when they still lived at home. My dad being the oldest son got to park his in the driveway. My uncle on the other hand had to park his in a dirt parking spot year round. my uncles rusted almost 5 years sooner than my dads. They never knew why. But i found something on this form a while back that if something is parked on some dirt the moisture gets to it faster and causes it to rust easier.

Whatcha wanna do is get that true coat

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Doncha know?

Is there some reason you don't want to mention what this "sporty car" is?

Not sure where you moved from, but if you are trying to compare the lifespan of some car here versus east cost there is no comparrison. Salt and higher moisture content both tend to wreak havoc on vehicles in the New England states. Not so much moisture and no salt over here helps longevity.

We have our enviro friends to thank for it. CDOT is extremely limited in the amount of sand that can be applied to the roads now. For the mountains, the gravel is said to silt up the waterways (hmmmm, sounds familiar). In the city, it is the major contributor to the "PM-10" count...which is the brown cloud. Of course then you have the issue of broken windshields and chipped paint.

And yet the traveling public still demands the ability to drive at highway speeds, even during adverse weather.

Unfortunately, you can't have both ends of the see-saw up.

So yes, wash your buggy when the sun comes out.

There is plenty of salt here but the humidity is a lot lower. The mix that DOT used to use on the highways was a sand/salt mix. Now with the mag chloride, I don't know if they dropped the salt from the sand spreader trucks.

The Fiero posted above might be a good choice for corrosive driving conditions - plastic body won't rust. Although you probably don't want to see what's happening under the body panels.


This doc sheds some insight:
http://www.coloradodot.info/programs/research/pdfs/2002/magautocor.pdf/view

Here is another good one on the cost of sanding:
http://www.coloradodot.info/programs/research/pdfs/2002/sanding.pdf/view

In Michigan.....rust central.... we own all own 1 car known as "the winter beater" This is usually a 5-10 year old heap that has 2 good qualities...it starts well and has a good heater.Pay cash for it and put seasonal PLPD insurance on it.