Yet another what truck thread

What's the deal with the chevy 1500 with 350 vs the ford f150 with the 4.9L?

I am trucktarded, so to speak.

Ran into this one.. http://maine.craigslist.org/cto/3188047021.html

Body rust cannot be repaired, only covered up with bondo and paint..

Thats a pretty strong statement. I think most good bodymen will tell you that if the customer was actually willing to pay for it, they could make that rust stay gone as long or longer than it took to rust from the factory.

I dont live in the north but ive seen a few cars and heard some people talk. It kinda seems to me like people in the north just accept rust as an inevitability and sometimes only fix rust because they have to to pass some kind of inspection. Ive got a car from wisconsin with a rust patch job that blew my mind with it's goofiness.

If someone down here in Texas has a rusty car (usually an antique they're fixing up), they can get that rust completely dealt with, and they might even be willing to pay for it because they'll believe that it is worth the money to fix right as opposed to thinking 'i live in the north, no im not going to spend thousands on an actual thorough rust repair because the rest of the car will still rust out anyway'.

Vigo wrote: I dont live in the north but ive seen a few cars and heard some people talk. It kinda seems to me like people in the north just accept rust as an inevitability and sometimes only fix rust because they have to to pass some kind of inspection. Ive got a car from wisconsin with a rust patch job that blew my mind with it's goofiness.

To some extent, yes. My '95 Dodge has been losing rocker sill metal at an alarming rate over the past couple of years. The annoying part is I don't really drive it when it snows despite being a 4x4 with snow tires. It seems to be rusting from the inside out so they were probably pretty thin when I bought the truck 5 years ago. Unfortunately, I think it's bad enough now that it won't pass PA inspection. I could get patch panels for it, but I don't really have the time or space to do the work so I'll probably end up selling the truck on ebay in a month or two. It's a shame since the Cummins runs really well. It'll start up a hell of a lot easier than my E30 after sitting for similar lengths of time. The BMW always needs a jump.

Vigo wrote:

Body rust cannot be repaired, only covered up with bondo and paint..

Thats a pretty strong statement. I think most good bodymen will tell you that if the customer was actually willing to pay for it, they could make that rust stay gone as long or longer than it took to rust from the factory. I dont live in the north but ive seen a few cars and heard some people talk. It kinda seems to me like people in the north just accept rust as an inevitability and sometimes only fix rust because they have to to pass some kind of inspection. Ive got a car from wisconsin with a rust patch job that blew my mind with it's goofiness. If someone down here in Texas has a rusty car (usually an antique they're fixing up), they can get that rust completely dealt with, and they might even be willing to pay for it because they'll believe that it is worth the money to fix right as opposed to thinking 'i live in the north, no im not going to spend thousands on an actual thorough rust repair because the rest of the car will still rust out anyway'.

A decent number of people from the north buy cars from the south, and are willing to either foot the bill for shipping or spend the time to drive it up themselves. I think that's a pretty good indicator of how much trouble rust can be.