you got to love chicago weather.... sorry to see that you should just bondo it up!!!!

 

My K5's got the cancer lol

 

Damn, now I have to look inside my fenders to see how far the rust has gone, knock on wood it isn't on the outside yet.
Do you guys with the 2000s and '01s that are so rusty do a lot of gravel roading, or mud, or drive in the mills maybe?

 

Around here they lay a lot of salt on the roads when it snows, which does wonders on your vehicle's metal, not to mention the snow itself finding it's way into places and laying there...

 

my brothers 99 or 00 looks the exactly the same(def on one side, maybe both not sure), maybe even a little worse. thats a bad spot for stuff to go up there and get stuck, especially salt like mentioned above..

 

Yeah, only pretty much on road driving for this truck! It's just a bad spot for teh salt and consensation to sit. I would recommend that even if you don't have anything show up, if you live where they salt, make a pre-emptive strike and POR-15 the hell out of those inner fenders. I went and did it on the other side just as a precaution.

 

That's good advice Andrew...I might have to do that, only I'm afraid to look in there and see what I'll find

 

Sorry to see the rot; I'm seeing more and more of this as the trucks get a few more years on them. So far my 02 has escaped this.

Some regular routine preventive measures goes a long way to decreasing this type of rot. It's part of the reason I like to hand wash my truck; the inside of the fenderwells gets liberally sprayed and scrubbed down every time I wash it. The commercial washes don't do a very good job of spraying up inside the recessed areas that hold the salt and dirt.

 

Yep, in the winters this gets weekly washes from my industrial power wash setup(grandfather used to run carwashes as a hobby), and in teh winter it's not as frequent, but not neglected. I guess I'm trying to say this is very well taken care of (although don't do the fender like you mentioned). The one nice thing is when i went to these three places for a quote, all three thought I had the truck repainted recently since the paint was in such good shape....got I love that Porter Cable.

 

I rinse the wheel wells when the weather is nice, & try to get my hand up there to scrub. It's a lil harder know that it's dropped. But I do what I can in the winter. When it's too cold to give it a wash like I'd want, I go to the car wash. I use high pressure to wash the wheelwells & underneath. Of couse, that's after I spray the exterior.

Every year, I can't wait to give her a good wash soon as weather turns nice!