I have a 2004 Honda (purchased OCT 2003) that is just starting to show some rust around the edges of a couple of body panels and on the indentation on a rear quarter panel that the gas cap cover seats into. The car has seen about 9 winters with salted roads. Is there anything I can do to slow/stop the rust progression? Or is the appearance of rust just inevitable in a 9 year old car that lives in a community that salts its roads? I have never owned a car this "old" before, so I'm not sure if there are some precautions I can take to slow the rust progression other than frequent washes to keep the salt off the car which we already do. Advice or comments?
Well, despite promises by car makers that they have cured rust issues, after time a car driven on salted roads will start rusting. Usually in hidden areas first. By the time you see it on a body panel, the rust is very advanced underneath I used to believe in Rust Check. The product works, but the quality of installation has declined so badly that I would be wary of taking any vehicle to a Rust Check dealer now With my '04 Prius, I carefully sprayed Fluid Film into weep holes, wheel wells, and other exposed components. Wish I had taken some photos of that process I actually documented the process with my FJ. These are photos I took 2 years after initial application. I decided 2 year reapplication was good. This is right after reapplication Manitoba doesn't salt the highways anywhere nearly as much as Ontario or Minnesota does. With rust, once it is visible on exterior body panels, it tends to progress very rapidly. It isn't called "car cancer" for nothing
my daughters 04 is pristene. we use as much salt as anybody. i'm sure there's some hidden rust somewhere, but no complaints so far. of course, i come from the era when the dealer sold you undercoating and the car started rusting when you drove it off the lot. interestingly, another daughters 99 accord started rusting in the mid 2000's and now the hood, fenders and rockers all have large corrosion areas and small holes all the way through.
I once took a graduate course in Corrosion. About the only thing I can remember from the course is that your car is thermodynamically doomed to become a pile of iron oxide. You can slow it down somewhat, but you cannot change the fact that the reaction from iron to iron oxide has a huge negative [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_free_energy"]Gibbs free energy[/ame].
