So apparently salt is bad for metal. Who knew, right?

I have rust under the paint above the rear wheel well. Now what? My truck is 10 years old, but it has only 50k miles and a lot of life left... or does it? If I try to get this rust repaired am I starting a game of rust whack-a-mole? Is my truck doomed to collapse in a pile of red powder?

Should I start spending money on stopping the rust or start saving money for a down payment?

Dammit I like my truck. I don't want to buy a new one! (Mostly I don't want to have a $500/mo payment again.)

If I buy a new truck is there any way to win the battle against salt?

 

its pretty expensive to get a shop to do it, but you can do some things to it that will buy you 2-3 years if you do it right. This consists of sanding down everything that is rusty, spraying rust preventative on it, bondo-ing any holes, prime, paint, clearcoat. There are lots of threads about this, search around a little for a more complete description of the process. Your other option is to find a new truck bed. As for preventative maintenance, if you start rust free, spraying rust preventative and then a rubber coating will pretty much stop anything. If you are able to get it rust free behind the wheel wells on your current truck and get some rubber on it, that will help too. You just wanna make sure that you aren't trapping any rust under the rubber, that will just accelerate the rusting process.

The way the two pieces of sheet metal fit around the wheel wells causes water to get caught in there, so this is a common problem, especially in the saltier areas of the country.

 

found my damn monologue on rust lol--

as a bodyman i find that the best option under a budget is fender flares and a little specialty coating. get flares and see how high they go up on the bedside, and work under that line. get a cleaning strip disk or wire weel take off all the bad, remember that whatever you see as a bubble is 4 times as big on the other side as rust goes. the por-15 kit is good, marine clean comes with it to clean off metal. Get all the rust you can off, then rust reformer, followed by rust encapsulator. YOU MUST DO THIS TO BOTH SIDES! the reason our bedsides rust is due to water and salt. getting between the plugwelds on the wheel arch. then follow up with some protective paint like por-15 or my personal preferance chassis saver. chassis saver works good because it dries rock hard and cant even be hammered off! chassis saver is made by magnet paints and you have to go online or find a local dealer they dont directly sell it. Eastwood.com will have rust reformer and encapsulator, they run deals all the time and are great value. walmart has black cleaning strip discs by 3m that work well, they wear and conform to grooves and curves your trying to strip. any questions?

 

Well I'm a Texas boy so I've never dealt with salt on the road considering I've never experienced more than a foot of snow lol. I know that a lot of people in the north like to get the whole truck bed lined underneath. A line X shop would be able to do it but idk what that would cost ya. Imo a lil extra money is better than a rusty truck. Or you could just move down here

 

I had bought a old Malibu from Michigan and brought it back down to Louisiana and is started to rust bad. It was going to take way to much to slow the rusting down. Got to love the south and our weather. But my friends up in Michigan all line x under there trucks and some muscle cars for just the rusting