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Comment by bradfa | Hacker News Reader

Are modern Volvos still better than average for corrosion resistance?

Somewhere in the late 90's early 2000's car manufacturers switched paint processes, typically to a water based paint.

That's the point in time where you could see the most clearly which manufacturers had their house in order in terms of weld cleaning, seam coating, basic material procurement and surface protection.

Some of them failed horribly, which led to some brands (for instance: Mercedes) having an undisclosed hit against their earnings to deal with the resulting rust issues on relatively new cars. It wasn't rare at all to see an early 2000's C-Class in the shop for the replacement of four doors, bonnet and rear hatch. And it wasn't rare to see them completely rusted out either a few years later. From Q1 2003 they galvanized those panels and then the problem stopped.

So everybody smartened up and now things are much better, to the point that there hardly are cars made that have serious rust issues. Coatings are a continuous materials science development front and some of the stuff that happened in the last decade and a half is extremely impressive.

Car bodies used to be gone long before the engines, those days are over.

VAG, Volvo, Mercedes, BMW all have a very good reputation nowadays for being rust resistant, I would not know of a favorite between those. By the way, Volvo is now Chinese (bought by scooter manufacturer Geely).

My own car is a 1997 (just before they switched paint formulation for that particular brand) and there isn't a spot of rust on it and as far as I know it has never had body work done. (Don't get me started about engines though...)

Volvo is owned by a Chinese parent company, but their operations are still based in the same places as before.

Using the definition implied by your comment, they were previously and “American” car manufacturer as they were sold to geeley by ford.

Edit: absurd typo, it is owned by a Chinese company.

> Volvo is not owned by a Chinese parent company, but their operations are still based in the same places as before.

You are welcome to use your own definition of the word 'owned' but I'll just stick to the dictionary one.

> Using the definition implied by your comment, they were previously and “American” car manufacturer as they were sold to geeley by ford.

https://www.industryweek.com/finance/software-systems/articl...

I highly suspect, based on facts about Volvo and the structure of that sentence, that they didn't mean to write "not owned", but rather "now owned."

Ah, that could be, thank you for pointing that out. That would make a lot more sense. But then I still don't understand the comment. Volvo is now Chinese, whether you like it or not is another matter.

Would you say that Arm is a Japanese company?

Yes, absolutely. As soon as majority ownership of a company changes from one nationality to another you're kidding yourself if you want to continue to see it as belonging to the country where it originated.

The shareholders control who runs the company, what it does, how it does it and ultimately where the profits are. It's just like outsourcing. But we don't like it when we look at Asian companies owning famous Western brands. But when McDonalds operates in China we're quick to call it an American company. That works both ways.

I never meant to say that Volvo isn’t Chinese. It’s just odd that people really feel the need to bring it up, despite the fact that operationally little is different.

It’s Chinese in the same way that Jeep/ram/dodge/Chrysler are Dutch now. No one ever seems to bring that up when they are mentioned, though.

> I never meant to say that Volvo isn’t Chinese.

Accepted.

> It’s just odd that people really feel the need to bring it up, despite the fact that operationally little is different.

It was merely for completeness' sake, and to indicate that since the days that Volvo pioneered this sort of thing the company had changed ownership.

> It’s Chinese in the same way that Jeep/ram/dodge/Chrysler are Dutch now.

That's a tax dodge and has very little to do with the actual ownership.

And no, Geely is really a Chinese company and really controls Volvo.

> No one ever seems to bring that up when they are mentioned, though.

Because most people are aware of the difference between a tax dodge and a controlling interest by a foreign company.

If you want to make a parallel with Stellantis I think it should stop with the shareholders of Stellantis which you'll find in Italy and France, not in NL.

Stellantis really is a European company, which was the point. I felt the need to choose a country so I chose where they’re headquartered. Regardless, most people would identify those brands as “American” cars, which was the overarching point.

> Regardless, most people would identify those brands as “American” cars, which was the overarching point.

Yes, car brand ownership is a mess. So if you want to buy an American car, I think your options are limited to Tesla.

Yes, that is indeed correct. Thank you for clarifying for me.

Apologies, that was a typo.

The risks of posting on a phone…

Someone else caught it and pointed that out. I totally missed it.

  So everybody smartened up and now things are much better, to the point that there hardly are cars made that have serious rust issues.

I find this entertaining. Come to upstate NY, USA where we liberally salt our roads in the winter. Definitely not "everybody" smartened up as it's still very common to find vehicles here that after 10 years should be declared unsafe to operate due to rust-through of critical structural components.

Interesting, any particular brands or is that across the board?

Here we liberally salt our roads as well in winter and in the past cars would not last a decade before falling apart. Now you really have to look to figure out which cars are new, 10 or 20 years old. Rust is - as far as I can see - a solved problem. Not many US cars on the road here though.

A big part, I think, is differing European attitudes towards maintenance. If there's a bit of coating damage and a rust spot somewhere detected by a mechanic in the US, everyone involved is likely to shrug and not bother with any remediation. The customer doesn't want to pay to prevent a problem that will manifest in years, and there's more lucrative work the mechanic could be doing.

Chevrolet and GMC full size pickup trucks and SUVs are probably the worst offenders. Which seems counter intuitive since many of GM's engineering and design happens in northern climates with salted roads. It's not all of GM's vehicles which are subject to this, many do have good corrosion resistance, they just choose to only use such techniques on a subset of the vehicles they produce.

For example: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2020/MC-10178959-9999.pdf

A few years back now Toyota had a big recall on Tundra pickups for improperly applied corrosion prevention. I'm to believe they corrected this as it was quite expensive for them to repair so many customer vehicles.

Just had to get rid of a 2011 Toyota SUV because corrosion on a hydraulic line cascaded to other problems. (Was overall in good shape but some sort of chip or other problem on the line caused issues.)

>A few years back now Toyota had a big recall

Mustie1, absolute YT gem of a human being, did a couple videos showing his efforts to salvage post recall Toyotas. Recall was a scam. Instead of replacing bad frame, or stripping, cleaning and repainting Toyota opted to pay third party contractor to just spray some black goo on frame rails so they last 12 more months while the goo hides corrosion (and traps more moisture speeding up the process).

RRRUST 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s7N8QEAAeM

toyota 4runner frame rust repair 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBB8YX1I1QU

more toyota frame repair 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdLNKOdi4-A

Toyota Tundra frame repair 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IBXYnYYccI

toyota tundra rusted frame repair update 2 winters later 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn-cqoVYQR0

TLDR involved welding plates to replace eaten metal and regularly coating in oil/liquid film protection every year.

Interesting. It was my understanding that the official Toyota procedure involved lifting the cab and bed off the existing frame and transplanting all of the rest of the truck to a new frame.

This seems to outline the requirements: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2019/MC-10154787-9999.pdf

The warranty work is listed at about 40 hours of duration for frame replacement, which seems rather short to me. For about a million potentially affected vehicles that's not a cheap recall.

Maybe thats what they were supposed to do, but the post recall trucks Mustie1 worked on all looked the same - spray of hard coat over the corrosion/holes the size of a fist.

Do aftermarket "anti-rust coatings" actually work? Y'know, the kind people are always trying to sell you at auto dealerships and the like?

That depends on the state of your paint. If the paint is still good it will help a bit because the coating will take some of the wear. But if the paint is already damaged then rust will have started and applying a coating on top of that won't make much difference, though it may slow things down a little bit.

The best protection against rust is to keep your car clean, especially from leaves, bird droppings and other debris. Wash but not too frequently and if there are scratches or other minor issues fix them immediately.

I appreciate this reply, thanks.

They typically make rust and corrosion WORSE, not better. They remove factory lee plugs to spray their anti-corrosion goo in, then often fail to reinstall them or do it poorly. Their goop can clog the engineered drainage paths and cause water to accumulate and sit. Some places even drill additional holes thru virgin metal to access hidden areas, which damages the finish and exposes unprotected areas.

> Some places even drill additional holes thru virgin metal to access hidden areas, which damages the finish and exposes unprotected areas.

That's an exceptionally bad idea for another reason: cabling is often sandwiched in between two layers of sheetmetal to protect the loom from mechanical damage. If you start drilling holes in box members there is a fair chance that you'll end up doing damage to whatever is enclosed. And of course the debris from the drill is an excellent way to start the oxidization process.

Yes if you use a liquid one like Fluid Film. No if you use a “hard” coating like Ziebart.

Hmm, we have one of the rusty c classes, made in South Africa. The doors, bonnet etc have been just fine. Underneath is the disaster. Particularly the rear end which has collapsed several times as it just rusted through in the first ten years. Bizarre. Bodged up by a backstreet garage it still goes, engine just fine, never a problem, just that faint disconcerting worry the wheels will fall off again...

Those engines last forever. I had a C-class from that vintage, it looked like you could walk in on one side and out the other without opening the doors (great: nobody ever thought of stealing that car). But the engine just kept on working and as far as I know it still runs (in Limburg, with a friend that I haven't seen since COVID).

My first car was a ‘96 Nissan Altima. By 2004 when I got it, the paint was worn away on the center of the hood and the top. My family got 3 new cars circa 2010, one of which is an Altima, never had this issue again. Perhaps this is explained by what you’re talking about?

Despite cars being on the road for longer than ever, I feel like I’ve seen far fewer “rust buckets” than in my youth

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