It's always something...

[seventwozero]

While I'm off in the man spa that is Alaska, I figured I would take my truck to my local body/Rhino liner guy and get some work that I've wanted done. I had a chunk of paint that had been flaking, and rusting after this past winter, so that was at the top of the list, followed by some Rhino on the remaining black trim pieces. As I was giving the truck a quick wash, I started to notice more... and after running over to my body guy to change tomorrows plans, it really started to 'hit the fan'...



This is that original spot. During my quick wash and dry, I found this..



It's hard to see from the photo, but that is about an 8" long gouge on the rear deck. I'm guessing it is from the stick on wheel weights that were used to balance my spare, that have since fallen off and were found directly below this on the bumper. It's deep, right down to the metal. At this point I realized that since I was getting that big chip fixed, this may as well be done too. And thats when my body guy found this!



That is bubbling, flaking and rusting on the other side of the truck (in the same spot as the passenger side, just behind the rear wheel flare). The second picture is dark but is attempting to show that upon inspection, there is NO PAINT on the entire bottom side of this lip. From the rear corner of the flare on the passenger side, to the rear corner on the driver side it is bare metal. :whaa: (edit: ok, there is some paint there, but you can see the line of flaking paint and bare metal come around the corner of the panel and down to the other side.)

After he saw this he really started to dig, I didn't take any more photos, but he did find a paint seam in the rear door jamb that indicates the whole rear of my truck had been repainted, not to mention over spray on some plastic pieces here and there. Carfax never mentioned anything about this :no:

Oh well.. While they are repainting the whole back end of my truck (pretty much) they are going to fix what 8 years of Minnesota road salt has done to the underside..



I didn't want to roll around on the ground anymore, but that should give you guys a good idea of what the rest of it looks like. Apologies for the awful photos from my Galaxy Nexus, my digi camera is already packed away.

Whew. Time for a beer I think.

 

[alrock]

Time to move south . . .

Glad you found it before it got too bad.

 

[Pappibri]

Well me being from Michigan, the Rattle Can is my friend.. Me and Rustoleum have become real close.. Every spring and fall I climb under the truck and take the stop rust Rustoleum and spray the frame and all parts. Powerwash and then hit the real rough spots with some sandpaper and then spray... It has kept the underneath of mine in decent shape.. Plus, anyplace that there is salt being used we have to keep the car wash in business and keep the underbody sprayed down all the time...

 

[seventwozero]

Well me being from Michigan, the Rattle Can is my friend.. Me and Rustoleum have become real close.. Every spring and fall I climb under the truck and take the stop rust Rustoleum and spray the frame and all parts. Powerwash and then hit the real rough spots with some sandpaper and then spray... It has kept the underneath of mine in decent shape.. Plus, anyplace that there is salt being used we have to keep the car wash in business and keep the underbody sprayed down all the time...

I bought the truck knowing the underbody was f***ed, heck, nearly anything you buy up here is that way, or will be that way within a year. I'll need to be a little more vigilant about spraying it down this winter once it's all fixed though. The DOT and city up here recently starting using liquid pre-treats, mag chloride maybe or something like that, and that stuff gets everywhere :gaah:

Time to move south . . .

Glad you found it before it got too bad.

I agree, as soon as I'm done with school... In the meantime, I won't be looking at any more trucks from northern states!

I imagine if that was the OE paint there wouldn't be an issue. Since it appears to be repainted, poorly, that's why I'm having such a problem now. I'm a little nervous about what they might find under than paint though...

 

[[__--MUD--__]]

My rig was doing the same thing on the rear quarters. Paint was completely delaminating from the metal. Mine had lifted about 3-4" from the bottom seam. It will continue to run unless you sand/knock it down to prevent water/dirt getting in there and having a reaction w/ the metal.

 

[seventwozero]

My rig was doing the same thing on the rear quarters. Paint was completely delaminating from the metal. Mine had lifted about 3-4" from the bottom seam. It will continue to run unless you sand/knock it down to prevent water/dirt getting in there and having a reaction w/ the metal.

That's sort of interesting that someone else had a similar problem.. :huh:

Whatever the case may be, the shop I'm going to is taking it down to the metal. The plan we talked about today was from the roof line trim down to the fender flares, rear doors back, including the rear hatch/door/whatever, will be stripped and re-matched to the actual color it should be. We (the shop owner and myself) could both see a color difference between this area, and the rear passenger doors forward. I guess I never really scrutinized it that closely, but under his inspection bay lights it was very obvious the paint in the rear was more of a "yellow'ish" white than a "blush'ish" bright white that is the OE color.

I asked him to take some progress pictures, if he remembers to, I'll make sure to update the thread with em'.

... Sorry.. rambling! I got into that beer I was talking about... damn Hoptimum's make me a cheap date :cheers:

 

[Hans3T]

I hope that the body work gets the job done for you. Road salt is a b*tch...

 

[[__--MUD--__]]

yea, that was one of the other things that started my 15 month build project. Ended up painting the entire truck. SOM would look great in the sun and like **** at night, or great at night at like **** in the sun. Finally said **** it, paint the entire truck.

 

[seventwozero]

UPDATE:

It really is always something...

I got in to town on a red eye from Anchorage at 9am, I had planned to pick the truck up from the shop on the way home from the airport. They had the truck ready like they said, the paint looked good, they 'forgot' to do the undercoating I had asked for... Whatever, after being up for nearly 30 hours, and traveling for 15 hours, not to mention worrying about the 3 cases of fish I had slowly thawing, I wasn't going to put up a fuss.

The truck was sitting outside, unlocked, I loaded it up, hopped in and took off. I noticed the clock was a few hours off which seemed odd, but I didn't think much of it at the time. Parked it in my garage, unloaded everything and went to lock the truck with the remote, no go. Funny I thought, but as I said early, not in the mood to f*ck around, locked the door with the button and went to pack up the freezer. Woke up around 9pm and headed down to the truck to drive over to the gym, battery is dead. I jump it with a starter pack and take off for the gym, workout for an hour or so, go out to the truck, battery is dead!

By this time I'm starting to wake up and realize my alarm is seriously messed up. The doors won't remotely unlock and the remote start isn't working, but the system still arms, only to promptly drain my battery. It's too late to at night to all the body shop I left it with and b*tch up a storm, but it will be the first thing I do in the morning.

The only thing I can think of is someone at the body shop set the alarm off some how and instead of trying to figure out how to disarm it, or bother calling me quick, they just disconnected it from the battery?

I used to think so highly of this shop, then this cluster happens. :gaah:

 

[alrock]

It might be the other way around - a bad battery is causing these issues. A failing battery might have actually cause the alarm to go off and might cause the odd behavior. Call the shop and see if they had to jump it themselves, and take your battery to be tested.

 

[[__--MUD--__]]

yea I caught hell from my father once saying "this viper alarm/remote start I put on his car is a piece of ****". He was stranded at the gas station w/ the alarm going off, no start condition, security flashing, etc...

Figures I was out of town when this happened. He lost a few cells in the car battery and it was causing the alarm to completely freak out after the engine was shut off. I did get an apology for that.

 

[seventwozero]

It might be the other way around - a bad battery is causing these issues. A failing battery might have actually cause the alarm to go off and might cause the odd behavior. Call the shop and see if they had to jump it themselves, and take your battery to be tested.

After the battery died last night, it must have reset whatever was wrong with the alarm. I didn't try and use the alarm or it's functions after that, in fear of draining the battery again. I took it to the local Compustar dealer today and the alarm worked perfectly, he hooked his meter to the alarm and said it was drawing the proper amps, as well as tested all the functions I was having problems with. I spoke with the owner at the body shop but he was unable to confirm if they had an issue with the battery or not. I can really only presume they did as the clock and other personal settings in the truck were lost, but it's difficult to say what caused the battery drain at this point. I did notice the interior lights had been turned all the way down, and because of the areas of the body that were being painted, my guess is the hatch was left open for an extended period of time during prep, paint and curing.

Either way, the battery IS old, OE infact, so I'll be taking it for a new battery this weekend. I read the Die Hard Gold batteries are one of the better ones available today, has anyone heard much about Interstate?

 

[[__--MUD--__]]

I did notice the interior lights had been turned all the way down, and because of the areas of the body that were being painted, my guess is the hatch was left open for an extended period of time during prep, paint and curing.

Either way, the battery IS old, OE infact, so I'll be taking it for a new battery this weekend. I read the Die Hard Gold batteries are one of the better ones available today, has anyone heard much about Interstate?

The body control module has a battery saver function built in that will automatically shut off interior lights after a set number of minutes.

 

[seventwozero]

The body control module has a battery saver function built in that will automatically shut off interior lights after a set number of minutes.

:huh: It sure does.

The guy at the shop that installs the alarms swore up and down that it wasn't the alarm that was draining the battery. It appears to be working fine again, we'll see how it holds up tonight while I'm at work.

I'm not really certain I'll ever find out what exactly happened there. I've never had an issue with battery drainage in the past, sans one event where I left the alarm armed for over two weeks (I was assured this was normal for the alarm system to drain the battery in this amount of time). I regularly leave the truck for a week or so at a time, without the alarm armed, and have never had problems with battery drainage.