I was wondering when are salted roads ok to drive on. I am sure they are worse when wet but when they are dry could they be used without salt accumulation on the underside? How about when they are packed snow with salt and not wet? This is something worth knowing if you live in the snow belt.
Even when dry the salt dust will blow into all the little nooks and crannies and start rusting your metal. I wouldn't drive it until the spring time rains wash the salt away like was said.
The short answer is never... By safe I expect you mean with respect to the salt damaging the car... The short answer is never... When I lived in snow shovel country I never had a car that didn't disappear from the bottom up...
Yeah, nobody drive on the Salt at Bonneville!? Just make sure you wash it down real well, on a regular basis.
that stuff eats metal like a fat chick at a buffet ! they use plenty of it around here , my late model pickup isn't that old and i keep it washed up regularlly in the winter and its already got a cancer spot showing up !
i drive my truck untill the first snow,around hear they "pretreat ' the roads with a salt brine solution AND salt & plow, i wait to the first good rain to wash it all awawy, the salt seems to linger all winter
if there's any salt on the road, don't drive any car you really care about, period. it WILL get into every nook and cranny and cause rust. even dry, the salt will be kicked up in dust form, and cling to your car, or you will drive through puddles which will really be a brine mixture. the only way to deal with the salt is a very thorough washing, check out the annual bonneville trip threads to see guys put lawn sprinklers under their rods for a week to cleanse them. but it is best to just avoid the situation, even the act of washing the car just forces the salt deeper into pinchwelds and body seams.
dontcha just love the midwest???? yeah, and you can was it all day long, by spring, there will still be more rust showing then before! shits evil! and welcome from hr and a half south!
Man you couldn't pay me enough to live in a place that snowed! I feel for you guys, seriously! I was watching one of those 'Future technology' shows some years ago and they were trialling different compounds in the asphalt that would keep the snow and ice from forming on the road surface. Im guessing they never got far with it?? Doc.
C'mon up to Michigan this afternoon, for FREE LESSONs! Seriously - it gets into EVERYTHING, wet or dry, briney or powdery. I've washed my daily drivers in July & still see white salt residue dribbling out from under moldings & such.
one big difference is that it is damn near impossible to get a COLD car clean. anybody who drives where it stays cold all winter will attest to the film of filth that stays on the car until spring when you can give it a good cleaning in warm weather. that film holds moisture and salt to the surface of the car, that's why dirty chrome wheels rust and clean ones will not.
Easy man! The buffet is where I go to pick up fat chicks! $10.95 and they're all yours (or mine). Bob
you have no idea what is like to only drive your hot rod back in forth in the drive way all f@#* winter
Lifes to short to worry about salt. I figure I fixed the rust once I can do it again! The Tudor is getting fully prepped to be a 4 season car. I plan on driving it all the time minus those super slippery days when you run the risk of some idiot sliding into you. But those are rare up here.
park the jalopy in the garage,don't take it out,ever. in a few years after you are gone,there will be a garage sale,i'll buy your car and bring it to my house and drive the wheels off of it. so don't worry about these things.sleep tight tonight.
When my dad was a youngster, he used to work with an old timer that was supposed to be Hitler's head Mechanic. He said that they (Germans) used to spray the undercarriage of the cars with drain oil. Now you green folks may have a probem with that, but I am hear to tell you that I used to spray my 1975 Gremlin every year. I still have that car and show it everyonce in a while and I drove it every winter till 1988! The frame rails and floorboards are still the original factory blue. It really works. We all know how gremlins used to rust too.... I use a pressure pot with a wand gun. Make sure you wet down the garage floor to ease in clean up. Costs nothing, and works great. Be sure to park you car in the street or gravel for a couple days
don, ive heard of that a couple diff times...luckly, my stuff never makes it to winter before is broke, so i havent tried it yet.. and yeah, being an amc fan, i know just how fast they can rot!
You don't have to use drain oil, do you? New oil should work fine, and probably only cost a buck or two
The only thing that ever worked(and it's probably illegal now) when I lived in VT was used oil undercoating. Picture this: You pull your car into a spraybooth, a guy punches holes on the inside of all your body panels(door jam/rockers etc.) Then he sprays used oil into every hole and completely coats the underside of your car. They give you a map of dirt roads to run and pack the dust on top and istruct you not to wash it for a while. Your car drips oil for a week or 2, BUT if you do it every fall and spring it works great. My '86 C10 had no rust in 1990 when my buddy's '87 needed cab corners and door bottoms. Makes it fun to work on too.
We here in the Northeast do it all the time. I've found that when spring arrives and the heavy rains come in, I just get on a highway when it's raining like hell and drive the interstate in the heavy rain with the water/rain just pouring out of the wheel wells and it seems to help. Of course this is with my daily driver. If I had something nice to drive, my baby wouldn't come out until it's safe. Here in the rust belt of Pittsburgh, you can hear the cars rusting apart. Friggin' people need to have clear roads to drive on around here. Bunch of butt heads that can't, or won't drive on a little snow. Now ice is a different story........
id pretty much go with dont drive something u care about on salted roads, like everyones been saying it will get everywhere and theres nothing u can do about it, i live in salt lake city ut, they salt they road here all winter long, and my wifes car is an 08 dodge charger and its already rusting on the under carrige. so u can imagine what vehicles from the 40s,50s, and 60s look like around here, fred flilntstone would be right at home lol. so all of my old steel doesnt see the road from november to march. so if ya do drive salted roads under coat your ride and wash it once a week or something
i know people back east who have a business spraying the underside of cars with bunker oil for rust protection, they have to heat it up to make it thin enough to spray, then you drive your car down a dusty dirt road to make it all stick real nice, doesnt make the underside of your car look to nice.
The roads are safe from salt only after a couple good rains and no possibility of a freeze so you can be sure the bridges weren't re-salted as a precaution. If there is a chance of frost on bridges, even without any rain or snow in the forecast, there is still a good probability that the bridges have been sprayed with a liquid salt solution that you cannot see. Usually that liquid brine solution, which you can't really see, is harder on metal than the grain salt ever was. Here in Illinois for the first time ever, after 6 traffic deaths recently, D.O.T. is asking radio stations to broadcast their reassurances to the public that there will be enough salt and IDOT trucks on the roads to keep them safe this winter, at the same time they are telling us plow drivers NOT to spread salt anymore except in special circumstances, and then only sparingly. They also told us they will no longer ask us to clear the roads completely. They will send us home when tire tracks are clear, but the roads still largely icy. ... Spending money to reassure the public that they are doing a great job, instead of spending it to actually clear the roads as we used to do. Politicians at work. This winter more than others, be aware when crossing a county line that the road could change suddenly from clear to iced over without any notice. Suddenly short handed and short supplied. Now is the time for better advertising instead of better cleaning. There may be slightly less metal-rotting this year if you can survive the other cars sliding into you.
Having lived in upstate NY all my life, rust is a way of life. When spring comes and the snow melts, I always look for large puddles to drive my daily vehicle through to help blast the evilness away.
I drive the hell out of my stuff I use the car wash that has the pressure jetts that blast the bottom of the cars alot and then to make sure its all washed off I go to Goodguys at Indy
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