Mrs.Sponte and I live by the water in South Florida. As such, our cars are continuously exposed to salt air. Mrs.Sponte’s car has had a few repairs to fix rust damage to the brakes, while I just got rid of my old car after getting a huge estimate to replace the rusted-out brakes and exhaust.
How do we prevent rust damage in the future? At the suggestion of Mrs.Sponte’s dealer, we are rinsing off the brakes and undercarriage twice a week, but I don’t know if this will be effective. Will it? And is there anything out there we can use? I was always told that UnderArmour and similar products were a waste of money, but does anything work?
spray on coating like oil or the thick black gooey stuff may help your undercarriage, I have no personal knowledge of their effectiveness. I live in Southern California where the most common response to your question would be: Rust? What is this rust you speak of?
As far as your brakes go, there is nothing that I know of that you can do. You cannot apply any preservative to them, it will destroy their effectiveness. Please note that rotors and drums in your brake system are wear items, and do wear out even without salt air.
As far as your exhaust goes, you can get a stainless steel muffler which should last a bunch longer than a standard galvanized one. I just had the mufflers on my pickup replaced (one had a hole you could put your fist through) with stainless steel mufflers for a tad over $300. This is a dual system so that is for 2.
I don’t think I have ever seen stainless steel pipe used in an exhaust system*, but I suppose it’s possible.
Also exhaust systems rust from the inside out as well as the outside in. If you do a lot of short trips where the muffler never really gets hot and stays that way for a while, water will remain the muffler and rust away.
If you are still unhappy about this, move to Arizona. Nothing rusts there.
*Installed by a muffler shop that is, I have seen factory systems with SS piping.
