I always wondered why they use so much salt back east on the roads. We dont have these problems in the southwest. The just use mag chloride or sand. When I was a kid I lived in Prince George British Columbia. That place is cold and snowy all winter long but they just used sand.

There are a couple of seriously thick steal I-beams not to far from me that have been half sunk in the ground for probably a good 15 years. I bet if you took a grinder to the outer surface you would find perfectly good steal underneath. Now that being said, old thin oil barrels similarly sunk into the ground basically disintegrate...


I'll try and grab some pictures pretty soon.

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1982 300GD Carmine Red (DB3535) Cabriolet Parting Out
1990 300SEL Smoke Silver (Parting out)
1991 350SDL Blackberry Metallic (481)

"The thing is Bob, its not that I'm lazy...its that I just don't care."

We have an iron sub in Milford thats been rotting for oh probably 100 years in salt water and is still in decent shape. I walked on it about 10 years ago.

Thats probably CT iron too, so it was made cheap yet well.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

As I understand it, the steel in late '60s / early '70s Toyotas actually came from the dismantled elevated trains (the "el") from NYC. The story is that the scrap metal was sold to Japan, as they had no domestic source for steel.

This could just be an urban legend.

I'll vote for the post that says that rust has less to do with the "quality" of the steel and rather the quality of the surface treatment, bonding, and drainage design. I don't recall that varying carbon content and grain size has a lot to do with the oxidation of the steel, but it might.

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1987 W201 190D

Cars hardly rust here in Tennessee and the ones that do have rust were either originally from up north or had set in alot of rain (we get about 60 inches per year here and its always humid). Minimal and short-lived snows = minimal salt on the roads.

I do think the newer cars have better rust proofing on the metal... time will tell though. Seems like on cars in the salt-belts that its the undercarriages that really take a beating. I bought a '94 Chevrolet Lumina in 2002 and it had alot of undercarriage rust that I did not know when I bought it... later on I found out it was from northeastern Ohio!

Oh, many of those cars on that list I have never heard of... must be Euro only cars or different names.

someone once told me that the steel refineries that produced the steel that was used in the US Navy Battleships, i.e. USS Wisconsin, USS New Jersey, etc are no longer in business. is this fact or is this an urban legend?

The major steel companies of that era are long gone. Mesta Machine Company produced many of the major castings for those large ships. the decline in the US steel industry began in the 70s and has continued since. One company that remains in a smaller role is Allegheny Ludlum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_Technologies
It was trashed by the corporate raider/downsizer Chainsaw Al Dunlap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainsaw_Al

Why do you think Pittsburgh has declined as much as it has? But the air is clean now with the steel industry essentially gone-and the jobs with it.

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87 300D 265Kmi
Factory rebuilt crate 603.96x engine at 200K