Will Our Prius Rust Too?!

If I owned a Toyota Truck or SUV that fell within the parameters of the affected vehicles?
I guess I'd just have it inspected.

I suppose my only cynical concern would be that it sounds as if it is Toyota themselves inspecting the vehicles, and Toyota themselves making the determination if the frame needs replacement...at their own cost.
Well my question would be "What are the parameters of damage that would lead to this determination?".
In other words the settlement is for damages "up to 3.4 Billion" but it's Toyota themselves making the determination on each individual vehicle whether the rust is bad enough to warrant replacement.
I wonder how many frame replacements will actually be done?
What if you are a customer who thinks the frame is prematurely rusted, but Toyota disagrees?

I also kind of wonder why retroactive rust protection isn't part of the remedy.
Again if I owned one of the vehicles involved, I'd probably do that myself.

Why couldn't the remedy be...inspection, rust removal-if needed, -protection?

Plus they will inspect them for 12 years?
How many times?
Do you get yearly inspections?

Yeah, it sucks if you are an owner of vehicle that falls under this definition.
But I assume Toyota, as any major automaker- doesn't seek this type of problem.
Whatever failure of quality control that lead to this reality, hopefully has been resolved. In fact, I would of liked to hear something about that from Toyota. How did this happen? What have they done to make sure it never happens again...not only with their Trucks and SUV's but Yes, with any and all Toyota Products?

 

We've had a lot of Honda's; never seen sub-frame, bolt and screw corrosion like our "flagship" Prius.

 

Will Our Prius Rust Too?!
No.
Probably not as badly.
Trucks use body-on-frame technology while Priuses use unibody construction.
It's still metal (more or less) but I'm thinking that the platforms are protected against rust-through for the design life of the car (10 yrs-250,000 miles?)
Most people won't keep them that long.

Stay away from the aftermarket places!

 

Why would that not necessarily make me feel better?

 

I suspect Honda was galvanizing their sub-frames, hopefully still is. I'm crawling under a couple of them still, don't see rust to speak of, mostly on the more exposed tow points that scraped hard on curbs. And the bolts/screws look near pristine. I believe they also use a paintable undercoat type base coat on the painted body low points, rocker panels and the like. It has a pebbly/thick texture.

I was shocked when I started looking close at our Prius underside: rust blooming everywhere on the suspension pieces. Some small diameter bolts holding plastic panels were near-seized.

 

I remember reading about this a while ago.
And Toyota has never really been too forthcoming as to where the quality control problem manifested.

In this day and age, and with the relatively low cost of providing rust protection to metal, you'd think it would be assembly line automatic?

Which only makes me wonder MORE where the defect/mistake happened?

 

Surgically applying effective rustproofing is very arduous and time consuming; there is a real zoo under there. As I'm sure you recall dealerships have been pushing undercoat packages for decades, but not so much of late. I think the drop off is because they're not that effective, and there's such a cacophony of materials and components under there, it's just not practical.

I'd leave this one on Toyota's doorstep: do it right at the outset: better bolt coating specs, galvanizing, special paints and coatings, and designs that drain well, don't catch the crud.

Maybe the 4th gen with it's independent rear suspension will be a little less rust prone, time will tell. On our third gen, with sold rear axle cross beam, the trailing arms in particular were pretty bad. Look to be bare steel with a thin/cosmetic coat of black paint, started rusting very fast.

I've jacked it up and cleaned a couple of times now, and applied some wax/oil coating. The second time maybe a week ago. That's probably it for me, let it do what it's going to do from now on: I'm just now recovering, lol.

 

We get a 12 year rust through corrosion warranty here in the UK and its cold and wet most of the time here, so I wouldn't think there would be any serious rust problems.

 

Feelings are so undependable.

The Prius is a completely different design from a truck. I don't think there is an issue with the Prius or we would have heard about it.

 

And yet...metal is metal...

I'm not saying there is a problem with Prius frame rust.

But the admission of a problem with any Toyota product, would at least raise the specter across their entire product line.

I WOULD HOPE...as an action of quality control, Toyota has reviewed their entire rust protection process, in ALL their manufacturing.

I never assume because I haven't heard about something that it's not a problem....but that's a philosophic life approach more than anything else.

If I was placing a bet? I'd go with Prius never experience a frame rust problem that reaches any level outside of the statistical norm.
Again, no manufacturer WANTS the problem, and avoiding it ---is the industry standard.

 

have we seen any prius rust issues, even as far back as gen 1? i have heard complaints and seen pics, but not failures.
my neighbors '04 still looks like new, albeit with the typical superficial rust. and we live in the salt belt.

 

This issue is not new and has been going on for a number of years (late 90's IIRC) so I find it strange that only fairly recent models are included. Maybe there was a previous settlement?

<Edit> Found it: "In 2008, Toyota’s infamous frame-rot fiasco on 1995–2004 Tacomas (about 800,000 trucks) was so bad the company had to buy many of them back, conduct extensive frame repairs, and/or extend frame-corrosion warranties by 15 years. The company never issued a recall for that problem." Toyota Recalls 690,000 Tacoma Pickups for Snapping Leaf Springs – News – Car and Driver | Car and Driver Blog

Here's an 2004 Tacoma with an incredible frame rust problem:

My '91 Toyota truck didn't have these issues and is still running fine today.