Winter - Leave the Salt on or Off

Being serious, I will wait till a decent day that I can do a proper hand wash at home. I really dont mess with the DIY bays or brushless automatics we have here.
 
Buy a gallon of Whip`s Wax and keep a small bottle in your car at all times. That way when you get some salt build up on your car and you find yourself in the neighborhood of a coin-op wash you can spray it down real good and at least get all the salt off. It won`t look freshly detailed (since you aren`t giving it a full wash) but you will be removing the salt from your car. Or you can pre-treat it in your garage and follow up with a rinseless wash. I go through tunnel washes (touchless only) in the winter to keep my DD looking halfway decent. But whip`s wax is a must if you live up north.
 
Be careful if it gets temporarily warm and you turn your hose on; remember to shut it off in the basement and drain the one outside, so that you don`t freeze water between the two spigots and crack a line.
 
One of the BIGGEST problems is the municipalities road crews are using beet juice as binder for salt or calcium (or magnesium) chloride for de-icing roads.Beet juice binder is nearly impossible to remove by just a pressure wash or a tunnel car wash. It must (almost) be mechanically (IE, physically contacting) removed via a hand wash medium (sponge/chenille microfiber/sheepskin mitt/boar`s hair brush) .I`ve wiped my vehicle down after going though a touch-less tunnel wash and the microfiber towel is so dirty grey/black that I know this de-icing binder redsidue has been left behind.Calcium chloride is the de-icer of choice on overpasses and bridges (any elevated roadway) because it works at -20°F where salt may be effective at only 10°F where black ice can easily form.Calcium chloride is almost twice as corrosive as salt (sodium chloride).
On the subject of leaving salt residue on or taking it off your car is really dependent on outside ambient temperature (or ambient room temperature of your garage or storage shed). Heated garages are the worst for winter driven cars with salt. Corrosion accelerates (forms) as ambient temperatures increase. Melting snow-and-salt in a heated 55°F-kept garage will cause a car to rust much quicker that a car that is kept in an unheated garage when outside ambient temperatures are below 0°F and the garage is at about 10°F. Now if the owner of the heated garage would flush (pressure wash) the underside and wheel wheels of their vehicle in the garage after driving it on de-iced roads, that`s a whole different story, but how many owners (unless they are Autopian OCD`ers) really do this.Car WILL rust through eventually IF driven for any length of time on salted (or de-iced) roads in the winter, despite the best efforts of the vehicle owner.

I have formed this observation from living in Wisconsin my entire live and seeing vehicles driven many years in our torrid winters. 4WD Trucks (pick-ups) and AWD SUVs (the vehicles of choice in Wisconsin winters) are notorious for this. Washing them is near-impossible in below 0°F weather, and even those that are somewhat well-maintained and washed with some regularity will succumb to panel rust from road de-icing salt.

Yes, get the salt off of your vehicle when you can in the winter, but know you are fighting a loosing battle. Eventually the rust will win. (Now, undercoating and/or rust-proofing a vehicle, that`s another thread topic)

Edit: The city of Green Bay WI did try an "experiment" many years ago to reduce the use of road salt to save money in winter snow removal budget by using sand to replace salt (I think it was a year when road salt was in short supply and cost had doubled from the previous year). There were SO MANY car accidents at corners and city residents complained bitterly to the city council that this "experiment" was dropped and the use of road salt re-instated, despite the (very) high cost. We (Wisconsin residents) have come to compromise having safer de-iced roads from road salt with sacrificing and allowing our vehicle to rust.
 
Lonnie- Good post! That bit about how only a diehard Autopian will do the necessary flushing/etc. is why I keep thinking "get a disposable winter car and don`t sweat it". Easy for me to spend other people`s money though, and I always get so Autopian about my beaters that they seldom stay "disposable" to me for long (e.g., that ratty ol` Tahoe of mine).

Yes indeed, the heated garage is a double-edged sword :(

pologuy- Sorry, didn`t mean to be inscrutable :o

Fuel-filler pocket = the opening in (usually) the rear quarter panel (often has a hinged door) where the fuel tank`s filler neck/gas cap is. The back side, gotta crawl under and look up so see/access it, is a place where lots of salt/dirt/etc. can collect resulting in rust-out. Some Hondas are notorious for having badly configured foam there that *really* traps the [crap].

Just as you can see lots of vehicles with rusted-out areas around the wheelwells, take a look on the quarter panels of older average-person vehicles...I bet you`ll see what I mean once you start looking for it :D Oh joy, one more thing to be all Autopian about!
 
As long as we are on the subject of salt removal from a vehicle and rust; someone has asked me if there was a "magic" spray or chemical that could be used in the winter to negate or impede the advancement of rust on vehicles. I said, "Absolutely!! I highly recommend primer and paint." Needless to say, the inquisitor called me a "jerk" (and rightly so!)That said, I do see people try using rattle can primer and paint to cover some of the rust cancer on such vehicles. I call some of them a 50/50 job: going by at 50 MPH from 50 feet away, they look pretty good! (Yup, still a "jerk"!)
 
Lonnie- I`ve actually had some pretty remarkable success using KBS RustSeal for that "cover the cancer" approach. Compared to similar products like POR15/etc. (let alone conventional primer) it always works really well...for what it is.

That said, I`ve had surface-rusted chips on the Tahoe for quite a few winters now, and not one of them has become more serious.
 
Back around 2k I spent 14 Months in Northern Vermont. The real estate guy was driving a early 80`s Suburban in perfect shape and it was winter. I asked how he kept that thing from being a rust bucket. His reply " I never let it thaw out and it stays frozen for the season ". Makes sense since a key ingredient for rust is moisture.

Dave
 
davidc said:
Back around 2k I spent 14 Months in Northern Vermont. The real estate guy was driving a early 80`s Suburban in perfect shape and it was winter. I asked how he kept that thing from being a rust bucket. His reply " I never let it thaw out and it stays frozen for the season ". Makes sense since a key ingredient for rust is moisture.
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The problem I see is with that is travelling on roads that had salt dumped on them -- it you have to drive on them, the underside of the vehicle will still get covered in briny slush. Exhaust and brake components will also warm up above freezing and promote corrosion.
 
I guess I am more of a pragmatist in this area.

Whenever the temps are above freezing, I take the car to a coin op to spray down the car and then do a proper rinseless wash at home in the garage. Otherwise, I don`t touch the car. I`m not concerned about the rust, and given the amount of salt on the roads here in Chicago, the car looks exactly the same in 2 days!

Now, if I had a heated garage, I might be inclined to do more.
 
I just drove almost 1000 miles through the east coast storm last weekend. from MA to TN. Car looked like crap.. caked salt all over and it really struck out as it is bright red...
I had some stuff for rinsless wash. Meq`s rinsless wash and wax.. Some MF towels a couple buckets. (nothing like I have in MA). I just gave up and did a drive through especially for the undercarriage. All the manual and touch less washed were out of commission in Knoxville.
Car came out really good.. for $9. I did go over it with a regular rinseless wash the next day when the temp went above 40.

the issue I has was the undercarriage. I knew the drive through will blast the car underneath and dry it well..

I asked my daugher to get through the touchless wash once every a couple months if it gets bad..
She will be back north in May so I can go over it in detail..

Regards

Nick
 
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