HI Zeus
Active member
- Thread starter
- #1
In a previous post I reported that my new-to-me CPO Lightning had a LOT of road salt on the undercarriage. In the attached pictures you’ll see what I meant.
Having lived in AZ and NM my entire life my only experience with road salt has been working on and restoring cars that have the long term damage, I’d never encountered the demon personally. My previous experience did make be very aware that it should be eradicated ASAP though!
I crawled under the truck in my carport with a high pressure sprayer about 11:30AM and emerged about 6:30PM. YES, that was seven hours of cleaning the underside of the truck!!
My goal was to spray every possible area I could get to until the water running down from that spot was clear, not milky white. Honestly, I still didn’t achieve that goal 100%. (I will have round two in a few days.)
One of the first things I realized was that this was not primarily road salt. I believe the bulk of it was powdery dust from gravel roads. Some of it was actually little pieces of sharp gravel, like I have typically encountered on rural gas line roads or roads to oil fields etc. I knew this truck was from Michigan and commercially owned when I bought it from a Ford dealership over the internet/phone 700 miles away. I figured those two factors accounted for it $4000-$5000 reduction in price compared to comps. Since the truck had only been in service for a little over a year and had less than 20,000 miles, I felt the cost benefit ratio was acceptable, IF I remediated any salt exposure immediately.
A couple of takeaways:
1st
For anyone who might’ve had any concerns about spraying the undercarriage (ie batteries, inverters etc.) with high-pressure water, I believe I have proven this is NOT a concern. (Obviously I believed/hoped this would be the case, but am pretty confident that I now have the most experience with this activity, and can report zero incidents of electrocution, vehicle fires or equipment failure as a result.).
2nd
The design of these trucks can result in an incredible amount of road crap accumulation underneath. Anyone who has been under a 4x4 with substantial off-road miles on it will know that horizontal areas like the transfer case skid-plate/crossmembers catch and retain a LOT more crap than the rounded surfaces of transmissions, axles and differentials.
Well, the Lightning has many elements that create this same type of “lovely” table-top feature, primarily the battery pack, but also the inverters and motors.
I know my truck probably had WAY more accumulation of crap than most folks would have at this point, but I feel like it’s like the canary in the coal mine for this concern, especially if your lightning is gonna spend much time on anything other than nice clean black top.
My personal recommendation would be to ensure that your undercarriage is thoroughly cleaned at least once a year. I doubt there’s much of any way to get it done properly other than climbing under it with the high pressure washer like I did. I’m certain that the typical automatic car wash with the undercarriage sprayers would do very little.
Having lived in AZ and NM my entire life my only experience with road salt has been working on and restoring cars that have the long term damage, I’d never encountered the demon personally. My previous experience did make be very aware that it should be eradicated ASAP though!
I crawled under the truck in my carport with a high pressure sprayer about 11:30AM and emerged about 6:30PM. YES, that was seven hours of cleaning the underside of the truck!!
My goal was to spray every possible area I could get to until the water running down from that spot was clear, not milky white. Honestly, I still didn’t achieve that goal 100%. (I will have round two in a few days.)
One of the first things I realized was that this was not primarily road salt. I believe the bulk of it was powdery dust from gravel roads. Some of it was actually little pieces of sharp gravel, like I have typically encountered on rural gas line roads or roads to oil fields etc. I knew this truck was from Michigan and commercially owned when I bought it from a Ford dealership over the internet/phone 700 miles away. I figured those two factors accounted for it $4000-$5000 reduction in price compared to comps. Since the truck had only been in service for a little over a year and had less than 20,000 miles, I felt the cost benefit ratio was acceptable, IF I remediated any salt exposure immediately.
A couple of takeaways:
1st
For anyone who might’ve had any concerns about spraying the undercarriage (ie batteries, inverters etc.) with high-pressure water, I believe I have proven this is NOT a concern. (Obviously I believed/hoped this would be the case, but am pretty confident that I now have the most experience with this activity, and can report zero incidents of electrocution, vehicle fires or equipment failure as a result.).
2nd
The design of these trucks can result in an incredible amount of road crap accumulation underneath. Anyone who has been under a 4x4 with substantial off-road miles on it will know that horizontal areas like the transfer case skid-plate/crossmembers catch and retain a LOT more crap than the rounded surfaces of transmissions, axles and differentials.
Well, the Lightning has many elements that create this same type of “lovely” table-top feature, primarily the battery pack, but also the inverters and motors.
I know my truck probably had WAY more accumulation of crap than most folks would have at this point, but I feel like it’s like the canary in the coal mine for this concern, especially if your lightning is gonna spend much time on anything other than nice clean black top.
My personal recommendation would be to ensure that your undercarriage is thoroughly cleaned at least once a year. I doubt there’s much of any way to get it done properly other than climbing under it with the high pressure washer like I did. I’m certain that the typical automatic car wash with the undercarriage sprayers would do very little.
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