<VV> Re: "Rust acceleration"

[Dr. James Waddell]

At 10:05 AM 3/4/2006 you so eloquently said:

I spent a while in Up-State New York where I don't think they
plowed the snow - they just dumped salt on the roads. The worst
rust bucket in those days was the Chevy Vega. You could tell how
old it was by the amount of water that sprayed up through where the
front fenders ought to have been!

So the 1970's weren't any better.

>It may be as simple as the fact that, in the 1960's, auto makers didn't
>care about rust prevention. In fact, considering how fast cars rusted in
>Ohio, where I grew up, it is more believable that "rust acceleration" was
>their strategy. The causes of, and cures for, accelerated rust were obvious
>to anyone who looked, even casually. The body structures had numerous dirt
>and water traps built in. Undercoat was created in hell to punish car
>owners for living in areas that used salt in the winter time. It guaranteed
>that a strong electrolyte would be held in contact with unstable iron as
>long as possible, to encourage maximum reaction of the iron with oxygen,
>a.k.a. rusting. A lot of hidden, interior surfaces had minimal, protective
>coating. It wouldn't have been hard to design a car that rusted a lot less.


65 Vert.


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