FELNGR8

I finally dropped and removed my spare tire carrier yesterday to clean and polish the batwing components. I found some serious rust on the underside of my gas tank, and some spots on frame cross braces under there. There is some accumulated salt on the backside of the D44 and a lot of rust on the tie rods.

My car has been garaged for most of its life but was a daily driver for the last owner for a couple years. It looks to me like it's easy for winter salt to get up in there, but the spare tire carrier prevents splash from rain getting up there to wash it out.

I just backed the car up onto a pair of Rhino Ramps and have plenty of room to reach most everything up there. There are only 4 bolts that hold the spare tire carrier up to the body. Slime has packaged a compressor and tire plugging kit now on sale at Autozone which I have bought.

It's worth a couple weekends work to address the salt and rust that's eating away up in there. With the Rhino Ramps you can just drive off if you need to while working on it.

MinnesotaWhite

Yep...same thing here...

Now the dilemma...how do you remove it?

After all it's your gas tank, so I doubt a grinder is a good idea because you'd thin the tank, but the rust has already done that for you.

How are you going to handle it? I was thinking of taking the rust down to a smooth surface and then using rust inhibitor paint to stop it from growing.

FELNGR8

I've had some success with steel wool and WD-40 on the frame of my truck. Some of the rust came off the tank with just steel wool and Mother's aluminum polish so the WD-40 should work. With lots of elbow grease applied.

redwing76

Salt? Whats that? Never seen a salted road in my life.
Hope I never do here they use sand.

Aardwolf

There were small spots of rust on my gas tank to. I used the rust coverter product. The most rust on the whole car was on the fuel lines by the tank. Also check where the upper and lower body panels come together. Like looking upward in your rear wheel well. There are black painted steel brackets that hold the two panels together. Mine had spots.

FELNGR8

Rust converter, is that the stuff that hardens the rust so you can paint over it? I don't really want to do that here.

It's a lot of work but the tank polishes up like a mirror when you keep at it. I did one bad spot, took an hour for that one spot, and in the end the surface of the tank is pitted a little bit.

I had to have the fuel lines in my truck replaced because of damage done by salt. Because the lines broke off at the tank I needed a new fuel sender. $1200.00 for sender and new lines. Salt really attacks brake and fuel lines because they are made of a soft metal.

mikey whipreck

I didn't see it mentioned, so I thought I'd point out that the metal you see is just the protective shell for the gas tank. The actual tank is a plastic fuel cell inside that metal shell.

And in the northeast, the DOT's answer to snow/ice is to dump tons of salt on the roads. And more salt on top of the old salt. And if that doesn't work, they dump salt on the roads.

Wreaks havoc on the underside of cars.

FELNGR8

That's comforting to know. It's still going to be a lot of work to make it look good and stop the rust.

I shouldn't ever have to drive this thing in winter salt again. But anyone who bought a C4 used ought to drop the tire carrier and take a good look up there. You don't know what you might find.

Rex Ruby

I've had this on my Ruby, cleaned it with steel wool and then sprayed it with that converter stuff.

85 500 horse

I used to live in NY and the salty roads will turn a perfectly rustfree car into a pile of sh__ in not much time. Back then, I drove a Nova and within 2 years of driving in the salty NY winter roads, both quarter panels turned into a pile of rust. If you must drive your car in a salty environment and if you want to avoid a rusted out frame, you MUST wash the salt off. If you wait until the end of winter to wash the frame, you might as well not wash it at all. Washing the frame every time you drive your car will be a real pain in the butt, but it's the only way to stop your car from completely rusting out.

I didn't wash mine back then and after two years, I was able to (and did) put my foot through both quarter panels. It already looked like crap and I figured a foothole in the quarter panels couldn't look much worse.

I was a kid back then. My fix for this problem was cutting a small piece of metal the size of what had rusted. I then riveted it on where the piece rusted out. I spray painted the riveted metal piece(s) with a color that was close to the car's color. After about 6 years of this, I think I had riveted on more pieces of metal than the amount of metal that originally came with the car.

Once I left NY, I never had any more rust problems. I moved to AZ and with a high of 5% humidity, nothing ever rusts. I have since moved to FL, but even though the humidity is high, nothing will rust because the temperature is always warm. So there's no need to use salt on the roads. Except, your car might rust if you live near the water. Even though I don't live on the water (one reason I don't is because I'm not a millionaire), I use a commercial dehumidifier in the garage. Not only will it prevent the car from rusting, but low humidity will prevent tools from rusting. No one wants to have tools that have rust spots on them. Or worse, a car with rust spots. But if my Corvette does on the rare chance develop any rust spots on the frame, I can always put my foot through the rust and rivet a piece of metal onto the rusted area .

George Dickel

I don't know if auto parts places still stock it but look for naval jelly. Should be in the body repair section. It is a clear jelly like compound that you apply with a brush to the rusted area. It will disolve the rust and you can clean it off by spraying with a water hose. If the rust is real deep you may have to do it more times until it is gone. Wipe dry and paint it.