Surface rust on underside of pickup: reform, prevent, diligently wash, or all?


  #1  
Old 05-30-17, 05:57 AM
M
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Surface rust on underside of pickup: reform, prevent, diligently wash, or all?

It appears that pickups and cargo vans tend to rust moreso than other vehicles.
I have a ton of surface rust on my RAM 1500 and I sprayed all the areas down with rustoleum rust reformer because the guy at the indy shop said por15 et al gives you nothing more than the aforementioned easily obtainable rust reformer.
The question is, does this prevent future rust like many rustoleum products or do I need to re-spray the areas with a rust-inhibitor?
Or is the better solution just to hose off the underside anytime I'm exposed to road salt?
Thanks
 
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Old 05-30-17, 06:18 AM
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It's always best to rinse off the underside of a vehicle, especially when exposed to salt. Most any type of barrier coating also helps.
 
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Old 05-30-17, 06:33 AM
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You're not going to prevent it since it has already started, but, as Mark said, any type of coating will help, so you might slow down the spread. The problem you have, as you have probably already noticed, is getting to the point of attack. The way they're constructed, not only is it near impossible to spray them with anything, it's equally or more difficult to hose them out in the winter. If I had it to do over, I think that I would have pulled the bed off my '08 when I got it and sprayed it good over the fender wells. But too late for that. What I did see in the past year or so was a guy had drilled holes in the inner fenders, maybe 2-3" diameter, in order to spray them, and then fitted the hole with a removable rubber plug. Too late for me, but it worked because he has a fleet of about 10 Ram's, he said, all similar mileage to mine, and the couple I saw looked almost as good as new. Unfortunately mine is past the point of return, so am looking for a new bed, but they don't come easily.
 
 

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