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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

given that the salt rapidly accelerates the destruction of cars themselves...

Moving from Indiana to the Pacific Northwest illustrated an amazing difference between salted roads and not. Indiana: right after you buy your car, take it to a "rust-proofing" place to have tar oil sprayed underneath, and inside door panels. Your Toyota will still rust out, but at least it will take a good ten years.

PNW? "How does that late-70s Datsun B210 not have holes in the quarter panels? What's with all these pristine cars from 20 years ago? They should have rusted to the frame by now." And our going-on-20-years-old Toyota/Scion xB doesn't have a flake of rust on it, despite us not taking the best car of the exterior finish.

Now, granted, it could have been in the intervening time that galvanized coatings or whatever have gotten better. But you'll have a hard time convincing me that it isn't the road salt that makes the difference.

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As someone into vintage restoration its insane to me that historically having an undercoating on body and frame was considered a luxury feature that companies like Porsche did. US big 3 were like who drives a car more than 10 years anyway? So half our cars are rusted out and unsalvageable even though the engine is fine.

Is it different in Indiana from in the Northeast? I've never heard of someone actually getting a rust proofing treatment on their car. I know that I'm supposed to get a couple car washes during and after the winter season to get the salt off, but that's as much as (or more than) most people do here.

That said, unless it's a particularly snowy or icy winter, the roads themselves are usually clear on any given day (in part due to aggressive plowing and salting during and after storms). So maybe if the difference between consistent precipitation and intermittent big dumpings of snow or freezing rain.

Is it different in Indiana from in the Northeast? I've never heard of someone actually getting a rust proofing treatment on their car.

The difference could also be the nearly 30 years since I've lived in Indiana. :-) Most people I knew got their new cars rust-proofed. But, again, it is my understanding that factory body panels have improved. I don't know the exact difference, but I know that new cars get their panels galvanized in some manner. Perhaps old cars didn't get that treatment (and I'd have to go look up whether that's true or not, 'cuz hell if I know). But what I do recall is that if you didn't get your car rust-proofed, there were some cars that would suffer more greatly than others. Chryslers would rust their rear quarter panels until you couldn't put anything in the trunk (though I think that particular issue might have been water intrusion). Japanese cars would just rust to the frame (exaggerated to illustrate the point).

But these guys (https://www.ziebart.com) are still in business, so it's either inertia from old people like me (because that's just what you do) or body panel rust is still an issue. I do notice that when I enter my Washington zip code into the Zeibart "find a local shop" page, it says there aren't any close to me, so make of it what you will.

> ... TruCoat. You don't get it, you get oxidation problems. It'll cost you a heck of a lot more than $500.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2LLB9CGfLs

That may have been true in the past, but they brine a lot of the roads in PNW now

I used to live in a place that switched from salt to brine, and brine is much, much gentler on cars. They used to last maybe 5 years, and now 10-15 before the rust gets them is much more common

But brine is just water with a lot of salt ??

I know, right? I don't really understand it, but my guess is that the salt crystals (big, pea sized rocks) are more readily stuck into cavities in the body and frames and they sit there forever, where the brine washes off.

I also wonder if the brine is more efficient and uses less salt? No knowledge, just anecdata here

Might be easier running the connectors for water sprayers rather than gravel coming out of a chute with a spinning disk to scatter the grains of salt?

Not an expert either :)

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