PSA: Check your floor for rust (1 Viewer)

[kevgentile]

Just thought I'd post this up since there are always posts regarding treating rust and with some are paying top dollar for "rust free" 100's, or anyone looking to preserve their's.

I recently acquired a "rust free" southern '99 LX. I have been going thru it to clean it up and pulled the interior out to clean the science project left behind. After removing the carpet and cleaning the floor I found some light "peppering" of white bubbles along the leading edge of the floor at the seal for the tailgate under where the threshold/scuff plate sits. It looks a lot like overspray dust but I dug into it and found that it was all rust forming under the E-Coat.

There are no signs of accident, metal, or paint work and is in fact the original E-Coat and base coat. I had this problem on a sprinter van where rust was very slowly forming under the oem primer coat.

Obviously it's a very slow formation since the truck is over 20 years old now but it is now starting to poke thru which means it'll start to accelerate more rapidly.
My Sprinter was of the same era and I was finding the same situation.

I took the section down to bare metal and going to prep and paint. Since it's under the carpet a brush coat will suffice.

 

[2001LC]

Pitures?

My guess in a rust free. It was a 3rd brake light or other rear leak into interior, soaking carpet over years. Toyota warns us: To use dry carpet cleans, so we don't promote floor rust.

 

[kevgentile]

Pitures?

My guess in a rust free. It was a 3rd brake light or other rear leak into interior, soaking carpet over years. Toyota warns us: To use dry carpet cleans, so we don't promote floor rust.

Sorry, not accustom to taking pics as I work, not something I typically do as a mechanic. Don't even carry a useable cell phone anymore.

Anyways, yes it could be due to any number of reasons but the rust spots are coming from the underside of the ecoat and there is no scratching or evidence of damage to the paint that would allow any water penetration to get under the paint. It was barely noticeable as it looked like white overspray.

Like I had mentioned, it is very similar to the micro rust pits that formed under the factory primer coat of the Sprinter van. An educated guess would be that if it were due to water accumulation that there would be very noticeable rusting and oxidation on the seat latch brackets and hardware.

The T1N Sprinter van was known to have some manufacturing deficiencies that contributed to this very problem. I don't think Toyota has the same problem, frames aside, but I have 25 years in the business in this does look like an assembly issue.