Why would there be NHSTA complaints? Most people aren’t going to complain if they can’t get anything for it. There is no recall that I know of. Toyota did a recall but not Ford. A vehicle rusting out after as little as 10 years is traditionally considered normal. These trucks are lasting 15 years. That’s a normal life for a vehicle. No recall required. My point is that this could have been easily changed with better paint.
There are lots of people upset that their <100k mile <15 year old truck needs a frame replacement that costs thousands.
Search for 2005 F150 frame rust. There are hundreds of results.
But there’s no guarantee that will solve “the problem”. Like many failures, it’s often not any one thing but more often a combination of things going wrong that leads to the eventual failure.
It starts with manufacturing of the base material. Many ways to go wrong, starting here. Too many impurities in the metal, improper processing- rolling speed, pressure, heat treating etc. This makes the base material more susceptible.
Then, when they fabricate the frame- if the tooling, equipment or methods used result in sharp edges with material not dressed off. No coating or paint will last long under those conditions.
If the metal isn’t properly cleaned or prepped for paint.
Poor paint or process used to apply or cure it.
The list goes on. Toyota settled with their metal supplier for the failing frames. Enough blame to go around…
Why wouldn’t there be NHSTA complaints? That is the process of getting a safety recall. Customers file complaints with NHSTA. And broken frames would seem to BE a safety recall, wouldn’t they? NHSTA is a government agency with publicly searchable databases.
Lets call that 300 examples over 900,000 trucks sold in 2005. So 0.033% of these 2005 trucks have owners that complained about rusty frames. Even 3000 complaints is only 0.3%. As an old professor described useless information; that is gopher dust
Fix is an interesting term. I would say they didn’t fix anything but merely delayed the inevitable slightly longer to appease their customers and avoid even more replacements. The point is, better paint would not have helped in this instance, any coating was destined to fail prematurely.
I just thought I would throw this into the mix. I have 2001 Dodge Ram, 2500, Diesel, 4x4… To figure out just how old this truck is, you have to take off your mittens and count all your fingers, you have to take off your shoes and count all your toes, and you would have to remove another garment or two and count a couple more appendages… L L . . .
I live in Virginia, just a few miles from the Atlantic, and this truck has crossed the continent about 5 times and it has seen the Pacific…
It has seen two Hurricanes, has been driven in Ice, Snow, and Mud… And the frame still has that Blue/Black finish…
Sounds like a good one. Is it normally parked in an unheated garage, esp in damp weather ? Underside pretty pristine looking expect for a little rust on the tailpipe. My truck’s frame has a good deal of surface rust, but the frame structure remains ok. I’d need a lot more fingers and toes than even those Roswell creatures presumably had to count its years … lol …
She does sit in a garage now, but it did not originally. All our “senior citizens” get the garage now… My '85 Harley, the wife’s '85 Toyota, and the '01 Ram. The “youngsters,” the '19 Toyota and the '20 Honda sit outside…
I hope not, on one trip that short bed had over 6,000 pound in it and at the weight station, I weighted over 13,000 pounds… On another occasion, I hauled a trailer that was almost 18,000 pounds. Yeah, I probably should have gotten a dually…
By the way, this diesel is the loud, the really loud diesel that the police have to scream really loud at me to tell me turn it off so they can yell at me… L L . . .
When I crawled under my back bumper trying to retrieve the license plate light, I was appalled at all the Rust on the back frame rail. Made me think I should forget the rockers and replace the car.
First is a sediment filter to remove the bigger particles. Then water softener to remove the magnesium (very common here in NH - Magnesium is really harmful to people, but it’ll etch your toilets). That goes into a bubbler to remove radon (again very common here in the granite state). And finally an RO filter at the kitchen sink to remove the arsenic. We drink water only from the RO tap at the sink. NH sells a lot of RO systems or some type of Radon system. About half the people in NH are on well water.
The problem with drinking highly filtered water is there are no minerals. So you need to take mineral supplements. Some bottled filter water adds minerals after water is filtered.
Back when I lived in Wisconsin, there was a huge issue with cryptosporidium in the municipal water system. It affected everything, including the local cola bottling companies. My house had a well. We had no concerns during the month long crisis in the municipal supplied water…
MA municipal supply had issues with contaminants whereas the private wells did not. Then a huge disruption when a primary water main failed and people were out of water for over a week. Private wells kept on running during this time.
Private wells certainly have some of their own issues. As Mike pointed out, you may have to invest in proper equipment to resolve certain issues. But if anyone thinks because they have municipal water they have no issues or concerns, my experience says otherwise… Personally, I like being more in control of my water quality with a well system.
Here in Hamton Roads Virginia, we are very lucky and have some good water. When my son still lived in Mason, Michigan, he had to have his well dug over 700 feet deep and the water was still terrible and we had to go and buy water from a water dispenser service in town. Since he built his home on farm land that is had either high groundwater or shallow bedrock. He had to construct sand mound type septic system. The effluent is pumped through three separate septic tanks then the liquid is pumped to the sand mound about 200 feet away… He had to put in a generator back up in case he lost power otherwise the septic system only worked a couple of days before the tanks had problems…
I have a friend in Southwest Pennsylvania and due to the Fracking, she cannot drink the well water anymore. It “bubbles” and smells of chemicals… If she holds a match close to the running faucet, the match glows brighter, no fire, but it does pop and spit when she turn the faucet on the first thing in the morning. She has had to install a water filtration system just so she can wash the dishes and the cloths.
We had something like that near me. Chemicals from the landfill leached into the ground water and the people living near the landfill had to get city water piped in. Before that it was all well water. Fortunately there was a highly developed area a few thousand feet away and it didn’t cost much to lay the pipe. IIRC the county paid for the water service since they own the landfill. It certainly wouldn’t be right to make the land owners pay for city water piping.
I have had homes with municipal water and one with a well. Never had a septic system. The well acted like it was mining iron ore! Took special pellets to subdue that.
One home had municipal water that made the coffee taste awful but the filter in the refrigerator took care of that. The county water system I have now is pretty good.
I’d prefer municipal water and sewer. In my part of Florida, it would be a “must.” The neighboring city is rolling out city water and sewer to people with homes on 1/2 to 1 acre lots with wells and septic…so basically peeing into the neighbors well!
I have a well to irrigate my lawn… tons of calcium in the water… but I would not drink it without an R-O system.
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