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rust on the undercarriage?

5K views 7 replies 7 participants last post by  PoMan 
#1 ·
Hello! so i have a 2014 versa sedan and I live in upstate new york, where we have some of the worst winters, so rust is definitely going to be found underneath cars here, but i was wondering if the rust in these photos is anything i should be worried about? i went to get my car washed for the first time all winter today and i checked underneath and saw some rust. Is it anything i should be worried about? Thanks!

in the back of the car near the muffler
18076
18077


near the front:

18078
 
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#2 ·
I don't live in the rust belt so don't have to worry about it. None of the rust looks to me like it's bad enough to hurt anything yet but if left untreated it's going to progressively get worse. If it were me I'd try to clean up as much of it as possible and either have the car undercoated or use some other rust preventative. Maybe others can give you ideas of what's best to use to help prevent further damage.
 
#3 ·
I would give up on that rust and would not think about it. It looks normal for that age of the car being in the salt belt region. No, your wheels are not going to fall off. I was driving cars with more rust, and nothing happened beside occasionally you find yourself dragging your muffler behind you.
 
#6 ·
I'm glad I don't live in the rust belt. Seems to me like it would be near impossible to keep a car in decent condition for more than a few years. We do occasionally get snow/ice here and they salt the roads. When that happens I use my old '02 Escort rather than spray the whole undercarriage of my better cars with corrosives. The old Escort has 207K miles and the body is already in poor condition where a lady hit my son in it about 10 years ago. The accident was her fault and the damage was more than I'd paid for the car so I just put the money toward another car and kept the Escort as a daily driver. Everyone needs at least one car that they don't mind the dog riding in or they can use to haul garbage in without worrying about getting the car in a mess. My wife is in the process of learning to drive so the Escort is also good for that. So what if she runs into a ditch or hits something as long as it's not someone else's car. Sometimes I go to my mom's to do work that I know I'm going to get nasty doing, I can get in the Escort and not worry I'm going to stain the seats or carpet, after all in 207K miles they've seen their share of dirt. I drove an '88 Ford Escort as a daily driver for years (518K miles) for exactly the same reason. I worked construction and was always dirty with sometimes an inch or more of mud on my work boots and mud on my pants up to the knees, I could get in it and not have to worry about messing it up. If the mud got too deep on the floor just take a shovel and clean it out. I was a party chief for a survey crew and sometimes used the '88 to move myself and survey equipment from place to place on job sites instead of walking and carrying all that equipment. We always had gasoline in tanks on the job site. The superintendent would tell me about once a week to fill my car up since I was using it as a work truck.
 
#7 ·
Hello! so i have a 2014 versa sedan and I live in upstate new york, where we have some of the worst winters, so rust is definitely going to be found underneath cars here, but i was wondering if the rust in these photos is anything i should be worried about? i went to get my car washed for the first time all winter today and i checked underneath and saw some rust. Is it anything i should be worried about? Thanks!

in the back of the car near the muffler
View attachment 18076 View attachment 18077

near the front:

View attachment 18078
Do not use any sort of rubber undercoating on any vehicle. That will look nice on the outside, but even after “fixing” the rust, there will be a little left which will eat away at the frame under the coating. It can be almost worse than not coating it. I would recommend breathable oil-based products like Fluid Film, Wool Wax, or another product of that nature. I also life in the rust belt (Illinois) and have had experience with cars whose frame I could literally pull pieces off of because it was so rusted (it was an 04 Pontiac Grand Am). I currently drive a 14 Versa Note Manual, and have sprayed Fluid Film under it for the last couple years after purchasing it used. I don’t even have rust starting except for the muffler, which you can’t spray with any sort of rust shield. Hope that was helpful.
 
#8 ·
That looks typical for a rust belt vehicle that's been through basically 7 winters. My 2015 Versa sedan looks better than that, but I've been spraying the undercarriage with fluid film and woolwax the past 2 years. Problem is, these products get washed off areas that get road blasted regularly. That exhaust flange you can see in pics 1 and 2 is what rotted right off on my 2015. Be prepared for a $600+ exhaust system once that happens if you're paying a shop to do it.
 
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