Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Thoughts on why this engine is so rough appearing

Uh, no....

If it ain't road salt, I could have been living in an area with dirt roads, that got muddy and wasn't washed under the hood very much...

figured that if it was owned by women.....

also spending a lot of time near the ocean, with salt water blowing in off the ocean...

I've seen that on cars here in Oregon and California, of vehicles right on the ocean....people will get rid of a car after 4 or 5 years, because they know body rot is coming....

My folks lived in Hawaii for 28 years.. and have been out there multiple times visiting....

on the north shore of Oahu, they had friends with homes right on the ocean... and had cars that rusted out in just 2 or 3 years, and had between 20K to 25,000 miles on them.....

Rust on that engine, means there is rust coming on the body in short order... that is why it was traded in....

What does the underside of the hood look like?

Looks like them seals/gaskets been leaking that oil. Owner thought he was smart and Tried to clean that [bleep] off with purple power, put it on a hot engine, got sick from the fumes, left the purple power still on the engine and went inside. Didn’t even clean it off.

Stripped off all zinc on that metal and it was free to corrode. You’d be good at a serious discount from dealer.

as others have said, that looks like salt. about every car up this way looks like that after a few years unless you wash under the hood regularly. unless this is a killer deal, i'd steer clear.

Ding ding ding

Most likely...

Minnesota is known for the crap it puts on roads and what it does to vehicles. I can’t count the vehicles I’ve hadthru personal and business ownership and never had one look that way particularly with low mileage.
Could be road crap but I think there is more to this than just that.
I have a 79 fj40 that has been thru every kind of heck and they are notorious for rusting, it doesn’t even look like that.

Osky

Check the label to see where it was made. If it was made in Japan it would have sat on a pier in both Japan and the US and would have had a long boat trip. Some models are stored there until shipped to a distributor or dealer. So it would have been exposed to salt water for a good deal of time. The components pictured have the lightest corrosion protection so would show premature wear.

I’m thinking it’s been underwater. Whatever actually happened, I’d leave it there. If the electrical connections/components look like that there’ll be nothing but headaches.

I see more and more subdivisions here in Tennessee being built in places that flood. If that car wasn’t taken to a dealership because of it, and there wasn’t an insurance claim, how do you figure Carfax would know about it?

Is the corrosion/rust worse on the one side? It appears to be in the pics.

I ran my 79 Toyota SR5 up and down Crystal Beach through the washouts and surf after Alicia, a year later that truck was jacked up to the max.

Lesson learned the hard way!

I have a good friend that owns a towing service and body shop. I was looking at a car he had for sale. He had repaired collision damage which was paid for by insurance. The Carfax report came up clean with no wrecks reported.

disclaimer - I haven't read through all of the posts but from the pictures my take on it is flood damage. Take a look at the interior, look at the seat mounts, pull back some carpet and take a look at the floorpan on the inside for rust or silt.

Short answer - I would not buy it even at 1/2 of retail price. As mentioned Carfax does not always show what may have happened to the vehicle.

drover

How many people rinse the engine compartment after driving in winter weather?

If it has a hood insulation panel, pull off a few of the retainer clips and see if there is corrosion where the clips hold it against the metal.

An over charging battery can do that.

What ever the reason is. I would stay away from this vehicle. Looks like problems ahead. Hasbeen

Looks minty if you live in the northeast

How does one get road salt on top of the engine during normal driving? Our salt/snow polwing trucks rot in short order, but do not look like that under the hood.

If that is from the battery, it should be fairly localized, and there should be acid spatter on the underside of the hood too. If not, it looks like road salt corrosion and you will see similar evidence on the undercarraige and the exhaust system fasteners.