PSA: Wash that dust off your truck after visiting the potash mines!

TLDR Edit: I forgot to wash my truck off after touring around the potash ponds last month, and wound up with a lot of rust under my truck. Make sure you wash your truck off right away if you visit this area!

So I had an awesome time careening my truck around Utah (and especially Moab) a month ago... and my truck has been adorned in red Utah dust for several weeks. I enjoyed the reminder of how awesome my trip had been!

Well, recently a bird took a gigantic shit on my windshield, so I finally decided to wash everything off. I discovered to my relative horror, that beneath that layer of red dust, most of the steel under my truck is now covered by an alarming amount of equally bright red RUST!

I must have driven through something corrosive -- I'd surmise perhaps a dry salt sediment that I kicked up, which took root in the bare steel exposed by billions of microscopic lesions as I careened through sand and gravel as fast as I could for five days straight. But I'm certain that I didn't drive through a single stream or even a puddle during the entire trip. There was no mud splatter, just caked dust.

Perhaps, it was driving around the potash ponds that did it? That's the only thing I can think of that might have kicked up a high concentration of dry salts. Even then, that's just a few miles of driving on dry roads -- you can't even get within a hundred feet of the ponds. And we were driving especially slowly there, because I was playing with the stupid flying camera the whole time.

But I can tell you that this truck has rusted more within the past month, than it had throughout the rest of its 15 year lifespan combined! I've driven across countless dry lake beds, camped at the beach, and followed snow plows up to Big Bear. But I live in SoCal and things just don't rust here.

Looks like I've got a lot of clean-up and repainting to do!

So, although I don't know for sure how this happened, I can strongly advise you to thoroughly wash off your truck (esp. the undercarriage) after adventuring around in Moab. Especially if you hit the potash road, which I naively suspect is the cause here.


Edit: later review of video footage shows i did indeed drive through a little stream near the ponds, might have been brine runoff. This is probably what did it! No way around it though, the stream crosses the road.

 

Okay, you got me there I guess. This is not the biggest problem facing humanity (or even my truck) in 2020.

But to elaborate: Out here in the West, you can have a 15+ year old car, daily driven, parked outside, with zero rust. Two months ago, I disassembled my entire exhaust, without a fight, using hand tools. And then I put it back together using the same hardware, because nothing was ruined by rust, not even the manifold studs.

That's why old Tacomas fetch such high prices out here, whereas in places like the North East, they go to the scrap yard.

But now my exhaust and undercarriage look like they just drove through a winter snowstorm in Buffalo, NY. This might seem totally normal to folks from that region, but for my truck, this is more corrosion than the previous 15 years and 180k miles of service combined. It was also quite unexpected, because instead of driving around New York in the winter, I drove around Utah in the summer.

So I made this post in hopes of helping others like me, who do not live in the rust belt, and who paid high prices for their rust-free Tacomas, hopefully avoid this type of problem.

ETA: Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like a complete condescending ass-hole here. Your gif reference was lost on me, so I took it as criticism of my post.

 

Not at all MK. Just me being silly.... as usual

 

I'm sure glad you didn't post the one after the foreplay that involves the "grand finale"

 

No worries my friend. The knee-jerk is a reflex.

Still not sure what you're talking about... but I'll always miss my first car, a Mercury Mistress. Sadly she rusted to dust during my junior year at Michigan.

 

So, because this was unexpected, I don't have great before vs. after pictures... Also, because my first instinct after realizing the extent of the problem was to thoroughly hose down and scrub everything, I don't even have any good photos of how perfectly the red dust blended with and concealed the growing rust problem.

Here is a blurry (sorry) shot of the underside of my truck after my attempts to clean off the dirt last night. Everything brown or orange is a new, non-superficial rust, which wasn't present a couple months ago. In that time frame, this truck has been on the Utah adventure--nowhere else--and it hasn't seen any rain or even puddles. This is just the result of leaving it in my driveway for a month with the caked-on dust from that trip. I suspect the dust was high in salt content and thus hygroscopic enough to facilitate corrosion at night, when temperatures approach the dew point.



It's not the end of the world. All I'm saying is that all of this rust is brand new, is far worse than the prior 15 years of rust accumulation on this truck, and most of all, that I really just wish I had hosed off my truck as soon as I got home from the trip.

 

Yep, its salt. My truck is COVERED in salt. Following my trip to Utah, in the summer, in dry weather.

Even the interior. Any bare steel surface with red Utah dust accumulation... is now pitted with rust.

I suspect my trip down potash road is to blame. It is, after all, a gigantic salt mine.

Who knew, I guess... but this sucks.



Everything in this picture was brand new last month.

 

Wow, I cannot overstate what a total clustfuck this has become. Whatever it is that I drove through in Utah... you should avoid like the plague! It's like I drove through a vat of acid!

Luckily, the frame, engine, transmission, and body sheetmetal appear to be mostly impervious to this stuff, and over the weekend, I managed to wash all the salt and grit from these surfaces safely into my sinuses and eyeballs.

But if i want to get back to a rust free truck, I'm going to need to pull and repaint essentially everything else that's metal, including drive shafts, axles, exhaust, bumpers, and suspension. And also pull the door panels and tailgate to defuck the door latches.

Oh well, my trip was still fucking awesome.

 

fuck that does not sound good. since you're not entirely sure what you drove through, would the best bet be to wash off in moab before the drive home? it pains me to see this and how much rust accumulated from just 1 trip and letting the dust sit for a week or two

 

I'm not certain, but I'd just avoid potash road.

My truck is always dusty. I would have rolled my eyes and made fun of you if you told me to wash it after a trip to the desert. Until this happened.

I'm not sure if I could have cleaned it off on the way home, but I wish I had tried. Once its caked on, you'll need a hot water pressure washer and a ton of scrubbing to get rid of it. It laughs at your puny garden hose and your dry shoes.

Look for unexplained water dripping from your undercarriage at night or at dawn. The salt sucks moisture out of the air.

More carnage: This was painted about 3 months ago.


This is how it looked after hosing it down last weekend.

 

what do you think all the dust has in it out there ? frickin corrosive salts with red coloring. it's all dried ocean bed
for a billion square miles

 

You know why the dirt in Utah is red, right?

 

Yes, and I also know why these ponds are so blue... but here I am driving around them last month:



I wish I could re-title this thread "PSA: Wash your truck after driving around the gigantic salt mine near Moab." I don't think the problem is just road dust from Utah trails. It's all the salt I picked up from driving around this spectacularly beautiful place.

 

Whoa, I learn something new every day! Thanks!

 

Skids: powder coated.



Exhaust: removed, wire brushed bare, and rattle canned with high temp ceramic paint.



Rear axle, rear frame, rear driveshaft, and rear suspension: brushed bare and painted with POR15. New galvanized u bolts, bumps, and bump plates.



Yet to do: frame (cab forward), front driveshaft and axles, and front suspension.

 

You guys should see the underside of my truck that spent 8 years in Minnesota... you'd lose your mind

 

I'm in NY and that looks like brand new up here. Shit they come off the car carrier with more rust than that. Maybe try an oil undercoating to help stop the rust and it will soak into the frame per say.