Rust Chips inside Frame

Hey guys,

So in owning my truck I have been fighting rust to the best of my ability and have taken a couple measures in truck to prevent rust from eating my truck. I have coated the outside of my frame with kbs rust seal and also put internal frame coating inside the boxed section of the frame. Now obviously before I did all that, the frame was rusting.

So I was checking out the rear of my truck because I want to get new shocks for it, and I noticed I had some chipped paint that needed to be repainted on the frame. Near the rear shackle there is a reinforcement on the C channel that boxes the frame in right at the welded shackle mount. I noticed that there was flakey rust on the inside of this reinforcement, and I knocked that off to see what was going on. To my surprise I found rust chips of varying thickness.





Now obviously this isn't s good thing, but the rust molecule is a lot bigger than the steel it previously was, that's why rust expands. But this piece in the picture above kinda freaked me out because of its thickness.

I took a flat head screwdriver to the reinforcement, the frame sides and bottom, and all I got was a metallic sound which was good. I also noticed that the frame right above the shackle is much thicker than the surrounding area, which would make sense. But overall after sounding the frame I didn't hear or feel any weak points.

Should I be overly concerned about the presence of rust chips in this location? I plan on removing the remainder of them (smaller pieces) and then putting Fluid Film or something of the sort there since I can't paint that area. I really do not want to lose this truck prematurely to rust, and I really do not want to purchase a new truck either at the moment...

 

Fluid film is a better solution than paint anyway, unless the paint is an encapsulator.

Even then you can't get the paint in all the positions you can get the Fluid Film.

 

Your '03 frame would still be under warranty if it was undercoated back around 2010-11. Have you had a dealer check it out?

 

Unfortunately it's not. The truck was not inspected by Toyota before the cutoff date when it was with the previous owner. I mean ultimately the best I can do is keep an eye on it and see what happens. Like I said before the frame has no holes, or weak spots which is good.

 

Sorry it's not. I'm under warranty, and my frame is holding up. I expect to own the truck long past the warranty, so I'm very interested in what others are doing to protect against the demon rust.

 

Fluid Film, biannually.

 

I went that route before. I did try everything. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do at this point. Spraying Fluid Film, which is a great product, is just a wasted effort as the steel is de-laminating internally. This is why the frames got replaced, if there was a chemical solution to this issue Toyota would have applied it. There are some owners who have sectioned in frame portions but failure needs to be in the perfect location for success with this and it rarely occurs. One of the steel's components was omitted by the DANA Corp. and those nicely photographed pieces you have there are the end result. Sorry. The location of your rust is typical.

 

Just to clarify, the location I'm talking about is this section of the frame, not the front leaf spring mount where many 1st gens rot out. I sounded the frame again today, and was more thorough, still solid. ultimately the truck will rust out at some point, as will all steel, it just depends how you protect it.

Even though those pieces did come off, they are much larger than what the actual steel loss was, as rust molecules are much larger than steel.