I always wondered why cars from the north were always so dirty (Rapid City: home, luxury)

[airboat5]

Now I know. Is it even worth trying to keep them in the winter? I washed my car after the snow fall thinking it would stay clean I never though about the melting snow. because we never even seen it. does washing my car do any good at all? does it help keep the rust down or shoud I just wait til spring like it looks like most do anyway. just wondering thanks cathy.

[SD4020]

Honestly I would keep it fairly clean, or as clean as possible. With that being said I usually don't wash my pickups until couple days into the melt. They will get dirty again.

[Gunluvver2]

The most important thing to wash is the undercarriage. Go to a drive thru car wash that has the spray coming from the underneath and all sides. Salt corrosion usually starts in the crevices that an ordinary car was will not touch. Two or three times during the winter should be enough to prevent premature rusting.

GL2

[SD4020]

Good post GL2.

[leroyleroux]

You are learning, airboat.
Gunluvver pretty much sums up what we do, maybe up to five washes.

[airboat5]

I run D8 and D10 cat dozers and after a recent eqipment move I noticed the tracks turned orange over a nite and then started to then worry about my jeep and tahoe getting rusty.

[ElkHunter]

I'm shocked. Is South Dakota still using salt on the roads? I thought they had stopped that years ago.

Here in Wyoming we've never used salt.

[SD4020]

They usually use a salt sand mix or a magnesium chloride potassium chloride mixture this year they are using more salt due to cost.

Snow is rough on steel tracks. Keep the idler clean on the track carriage.

[DannyBanany]

I worked at a carwash back in Rapid City, so I had the luxury of FREE carwashes everyday. I'd say clean it once a week. Obviously, if it's a week of endless snow-melt-snow-melt washing it won't do much good. It was funny working at the carwash because some winter days would be dead and the next day we'd have a line wrapping around the block. Up here in the Cities we use salt and the chemical mixture, so I wash it every week or so.

By the way, I'm jealous of the friggin' nice temps you've been having back home. Mom's already planning ahead on the garden.

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by ElkHunter

I'm shocked. Is South Dakota still using salt on the roads? I thought they had stopped that years ago.

Here in Wyoming we've never used salt.

From my years in Wyoming, WYDOT uses magnesium chloride like crazy. Mag chloride is also a salt (mined out of the mud flats of the Great Salt Lake in Utah). It has an oily consistency, is very hard to wash off, and is quite corrosive over time. Its corrosive tendencies are enhanced by the difficulty of washing it off easily. Studies are also showing that mag chloride leeching into soil is killing trees and other vegetation near highways where it is used heavily. Yeah, heavy salt concentrations do tend to do that. In my home state of Colorado, that is getting to be a significant problem.

Personally, I wish that states would go back to actually teaching people how to drive on snowpacked and icy roads, and quit trying to melt everything off the roads in 10 minutes after a snowfall with mag chloride, salt, and other chemicals. But, hey, that would mean asking people to take some personal responsibility to stay off of the roads if they lack competence to drive in adverse conditions. Oh, we sure couldn't do that.