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The Global Cost of Corrosion

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241–250 of 251 posts

Re: The Global Cost of Corrosion

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Japanese carmakers build cars to rust out in half a decade and thus nobody wants to buy old rustbuckets thus the carmakers don't bother to build them to last.

It is a actually a legal and insurance issue in Japan. The costs are not tied to the quality of the vehicle. If it costs more to recertify a perfectly functional used vehicle than lease a brand new one, it makes sense to opt for new one.

A HUGE reform to our “throw-away 1 ton of iron” culture of ecology in Europe would be to rewrite the insurance estimates of cars.

The fact that insurances value a car of 35k€ at, I’m guessing, 25k€ at the exit of the garage, then 18, 12, 7, 4, 2k€ the following years, means that people see no value in used cars.

Whereas the real value of a car is certainly 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20k€ along the years, and when one recycles it, it’s actually a huge new cost for the household, for a car that could last 20 years. It breaks after 7 years? “Yeah buying a differential costs more than the entire price of the car, sir.”

Re: The Global Cost of Corrosion

#242
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some Japanese brands are "galvanizing" instead of proper electro-galvanizing. Here is investigation into Mazda, legendary for rotting into nothing. https://www.reddit.com/r/mazda3/comments/adioma/polish_autom...

the mazda3 used to be terrible for rusting but they changed something in 2007, a collegue mazda3 was from 2006 and it rusted so much thast it had almost no resale value, my gf mazda3 from 2008 sill looks new... p.s. I live in a place were salt used to be applied aggressively in the winter. Nowadays they use more sand and only use salt when the road conditions really requires it. but it's a recent development (3 years…

The test was in 2019. Mazda was spraying a coat of zinc paint, dedicated metallurgical instrument was unable to detect galvanization process. Manufacturer protested claiming a coat of zinc is coat of zinc regardless of uniformity, adherence, purity or quality :)

Re: The Global Cost of Corrosion

#243

The environmentalists killed a zinc mine in my state due to pollution concerns. Of course every pound of zinc not mined meant more steel without zinc protection, and hence more rust and more mining of iron ore. Arguments like this were completely lost on them.

Environmentalists are often short sighted and more interested in scoring political points than saving the environment. In a large part, they are responsible for global warming by killing off the nuclear sector.

Re: The Global Cost of Corrosion

#244
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...democracy... It's a system explicitly designed to be short-sighted. It's not explicitly designed for that. It's designed to avoid concentration and abuse of power, peaceful transition of power, and to create some level of fairness. Democracy wasn't designed to produce the best society or the most wealthy society. Democracy was designed to avoid dictators/kings and other really bad things :) That said, we often s…

It's a system explicitly designed to be short-sighted. I'm not sure what else we'd call a system where elected officials have zero incentive to do anything other than look good for their re-election campaign in a few years. Clearly, many politicians have gone above and beyond that and accomplished useful things. But there is zero incentive baked into the system for them to do so. Democracy was designed to avoid dicta…

> I'm not sure what else we'd call a system where elected officials have zero incentive to do anything other than look good for their re-election campaign in a few years.

We call it a side effect. Democracy certainly wasn't designed with short sightedness in mind. That's a side effect of the far more important design goals around preventing abuse of power.

Democracy may be short-sighted, but not by design, rather as a side effect of the design.

Assuming we buy the idea that democracy is indeed short sighted.

Every considered that as long as democracy avoids establishment of dictators/kings, repression and the unavoidable civil wars that follow, then given time free market forces will produce good results.

One could reasonable argue democracy is just very very long sighted.

> Generally it seems you wind up with oligarchs/corporations effectively owning politicians

This isn't new, and yet we have built infrastructure before. Fought world wars. Irradiated deceases. Walked on the moon.

On the scales of history large corporations tend to slide into irrelevance over time.

The tech giants of today, will be rubber barons of tomorrow. Sure we might seem them around in the future. But a hundred years from now they might not seem so big.

Re: The Global Cost of Corrosion

#245
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like that is a self-perpetuating cycle. Japanese carmakers build cars to rust out in half a decade and thus nobody wants to buy old rustbuckets thus the carmakers don't bother to build them to last.

This was true in the 60s and 70s for Jap cars, they didnt make them to rust, they just didnt rust prevent like they do now. Go watch youtube and watch some rust belt mechanics like south main auto and u will see what what cars rust and what cars last now (hint, US made cars dont even last 10yrs with salt) I personally drive a jap car from the 90s and 400+k on the clock. I can fix everything myself including rebuildin…

The GP talked about Japan only applied rust protection on cars for the export market. Their domestic cars were designed to rust out.

Re: The Global Cost of Corrosion

#247
post #227
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.nht…

>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…

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.

Re: The Global Cost of Corrosion

#248
post #247
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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 mill…

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.

Re: The Global Cost of Corrosion

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a actually a legal and insurance issue in Japan. The costs are not tied to the quality of the vehicle. If it costs more to recertify a perfectly functional used vehicle than lease a brand new one, it makes sense to opt for new one.

A HUGE reform to our “throw-away 1 ton of iron” culture of ecology in Europe would be to rewrite the insurance estimates of cars. The fact that insurances value a car of 35k€ at, I’m guessing, 25k€ at the exit of the garage, then 18, 12, 7, 4, 2k€ the following years, means that people see no value in used cars. Whereas the real value of a car is certainly 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20k€ along the years, and when one recycl…

But it isn't the insurance that defines the price,it is the sales market. It doesn't matter if insurance says it is worth 20k if people will only pay 2k

Re: The Global Cost of Corrosion

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all metals oxidize. You could build something out of gold or maybe platinum and avoid oxidation, but it would obviously be expensive. The U.S. navy does have some very large aluminum ships such as the Independence Class[1]. These ships are apparently having some teething issues, but it is quite the feat to have a 414 ft long aluminum ship that can go upwards of 50 knots. [1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ind…

> Almost all metals oxidize. > The U.S. navy does have some very large aluminum ships Unfortunately aluminum also rusts, it just happens to be a chemically stable and resistant rusting - but not in a stable enough manner to be mechanically/abrasive resistant, that's why you don't see them deployed in widespread use at stressing conditions like internal combustion engine blocks or fast ship hulls. From said cited Wiki…

Very interesting - I’ve always been confused by why aluminium is often stated as being rust-proof, but doesn’t appear to be as useful in the real world.

Aren’t there quite a few aluminium engine blocks in cars though? For example, the LS small block is now aluminium.

Or do you mean used in marine applications, where rust is an issue? That would probably make more sense (and may actually be implied by the context).

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