Beneficial maintenance routine or pointless waste of time?

Quite a few years ago years ago, after I'd had the first brand-new vehicle I'd ever owned for about 10 years or so, I had to replace the rear shocks, and having nowhere to work at the time, i took it to a local garage; it turned out that the bolts holding the shocks to the axle were so corroded that they had to cut them off and weld in new ones.

Ever since then, with every vehicle a couple of times a year, I go around and give every potentially problematic fastener (exhaust system, body mounts, suspension, brake lines, etc, etc...) a shot of penetrating oil in the belief that if/when I do have to remove something, it will be that much easier.

Anyone else do this or something similar and/or do you think there's any value or am I just wasting time, effort and penetrating oil?

 

No I do the same thing. Anything I remove and reinstall gets copper based or zinc based antiseize, or blue locktite. The locktite seals from corrosion petty well too.

 

I used to do this with my dads 4runner when I started as a tech. It's a huge waste of time unless you plan on keeping long term.

My points of attack would be suspension bolts. and the 2 fuel tank strap bolts. (might be too late for those)

Brake bleeds and slider pins are a big deal too.

 

Thanks Guys! And, yes... I plan on keeping this one for a long time.

 

I do the exact same thing twice every year with Krown or Fluid Film. And thats on top of my yearly full krown rustproofing. I fking hate rust. You are doing your truck and yourself a favor there.

 

I think it depends on where you live, here in the Southwest we don't have the problems with rust other parts of the country have. Case-in-point I recently replaced an Oxygen Sensor on my '04 Silverado which has never seen salt (but has seen lots of highway use and dirt roads). With the proper tool the 02 Sensor came right out, new one threaded right in, no problems. On another forum I frequent that same repair is hated and feared because of how quickly those trucks tend to rust.

If I lived in a place where road salt and rust was an issue I would be doing the same thing you're doing.

 

If you want something to move, give it oil.

If you want something to not move, don't give it oil.



Personally, I don't want bolts to get loose without me making them loose.

 

I think this is different than using penetrating oil.

 

Kind of, But Krown is also marketed as a penetrating oil and certainly works well as one. Fluid film not so much but sometimes its all I can find. I do it for rustproofing and ease of future part replacement/maintenance.

 

Fair, but by the same token, I don't want to rely on corrosion to keep fasteners together... AND, I really believe that a squirt of penetrating oil twice a year is going to cause anything to loosen up, but it will make it easier to get apart should the need arise.

 

Seems ok to me. I check my tire pressure every week. Good thing I did because I found two week in a row two different tires were leaking air from a screw.

 

Keep it forever, do it. Keep it 4-5 years, don't do it. Simple.

 

Just keep in mind that anything that gets antisieze now has a different torque spec than anything re-assembled dry.

 

Outside of spraying the undercarriage of my last truck every fall, and doing the routine maintenance listed in the owners manual...i hadn't a need to do anything else for nearly 300k miles unless it broke, which included the entire exhaust system, plus i upgraded the brake system to stop better, and last much longer.

 

Good point - I generally allow about 10% for anti-seize and generally use it on non torque-critical fasteners (ie, NOT heads, etc).

 

When I get a new vehicle, I think about what I'm likely to need to replace during my ownership and remove and apply never seize to those bolts.