Rusted Engine Bolts

So I have a 2016 tacoma, so about 4 years old, and I am seeing a lot of rust in the engine bay primarily on the bolts. Is anyone else seeing this? I live in Southern California near the ocean, so maybe that is accelerating the corrosion, but I am surprised to see this after such a short period of time.

I am thinking of replacing as many as I can easily access.

Will upload pics when I can.

 

Also anyone know anything about Corrosion X? Heard it is used extensively for aircraft to remove and prevent rust.

 

Are you parking it at the beach every day? If not, I wouldn't worry about it. Unless, of course, you want to remove the engine at some point.

 

I live about half a mile from the Ocean. I'm planning on keeping the truck for as long as possible. My concern is, when I do have to do work on the engine, I don't want bolts snapping off.

I got really concerned when I was helping my buddy work on his 2002 Sequoia yesterday and noticed he has almost zero rust in his engine bay. He lives a mile up the road from me.

 

Some pictures would help to get the best advice .

 

Living in a state with salt covered roads 8 months of the year, I always get a kick out of these rust threads.

 

OP, hate to say it, but you take shit care of your truck!

That engine bay has way more issues than rusted bolts.

G.

 

I see what u did there. Rust threads

 

Found the problem.

It's part of it, man. I'm not being salty, its just a fact of life when you live on the coast. Washing things down just occasionally would massively help with that. Dirt holds moisture to make the rust issue even worse. Every time you've had that salty schmutz on your windows, it was also all over the rest of your truck. Annecdote: my seat rails in a TJ rusted to the point that they were hanging up and i had to grease them after one week open at the beach. It was already 15 years old and had yet to have that issue... and the previous owner left it outside with no top for 3 years!

One week ocean front. 4 years and a ½ mile, sounds right.

 

I was afraid of that. What should I be doing that I am not? I've stayed on top of all the regularly scheduled maintenance, fluid changed, etc. But have always been weary of cleaning the engine bay. Have heard mixed opinions about whether or not you should do that.

 

Half a mile from the ocean, you need to rinse everything down more often. I lived in Jax with my 2nd gen 4 miles from the beach, and mine was fine with some extra upkeep.

G.

 

I'll keep that in mind. I was told that I shouldn't be spraying water in there. Clearly that was bad advise. I have never seen this with any of my previous vehicles though. Let's hope it's not too late for me to clean it up and stay on top of the upkeep.

 

I'm going to guess that all that "dirt" you see in the engine bay has some amount of salt content. Since you aren't washing it away on occasion, it's attacking the metal. Probably need to clean the engine bay on occasion. As far as fixing the damage done, you'd have to wire brush it away and coat it.

 

You need to be careful and try not to spray water on the alternator, but you drive through a giant puddle and it probably gets a little wet in there.

Just be careful with the electronics and I usually crank and drive it to get the moisture back out of the engine bay when I do it.... which honestly isn't that often.

 

Holy crap that is bad! Can you paint over the bolts with some paint to protect em?

 

Should I be using any rust removing compounds to assist in removing the rust or is that not recommended?

 

My first truck, a 1974 Datsun pickup, had so much rust that my front quarter panels were held on by bungi cords, puddles often sprayed my passengers through the (lack of) floorboards, and large objects were lost through large holes in the bed.

 

Ronny Dahl has a YouTube video about cleaning rigs that includes some advice about the engine bay.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hwrrHkBsz1U

 

I imagine if I paint them without first removing the rust it won't stop the rust from spreading.