Prius Rust under Scuff Plate (driver side)

I just checked bottom on my 2010. Looks interesting I scratched a little and there’s some white rather soft coating underneath. Like the coating that protect from mechanical wear (sand, pebbles etc). But i think it’s genuine ”honest rust” and not any ”fly iron” rust.

i think i’m gonna spray something and try to stop or at least slow down a little

 

If you are asking about 9 years old car driven in Montreal every winter, then I would have to say any underbody rust is normal. I have never had a car that lasts longer than 10 years without having some rust problem in my climate. The underbody of any car, I mean not specific to Prius, but any car gets rusty by 5-6 years old sometimes as early as within in first few years. But the actual problem does not happen usually until ~10 years old.

 

Geez, I remember your high-mount brake light removal woes, screws that'd turned into rust-lumps. They use copious amounts of road salt I guess.

Same area on our 2010:


The roads are salted here, but maybe not so much, and winters are mostly rainy.

 

Yeah, the ”salt season” starting right now. Tomorrow there’ll be snow&ice and they’ll be spraying roads. Additionally, she has 212kkm on the clock so she’s seen quite much salty and non-salty roads.

Could not resist myself and bought couple spray bottles of Dinitrol ML today. It’s stuff for enclosures and such mainly but it has good corrosion stop properties and i’ve been using it for my old cars many years. Did not bother to brush surfaces since nothing came off, sticking very hard, so i just sprayed the bottom areas that are not covered by those plastics. Interestingly ML kind of washed the surface when sprayed from very close distance. There was short moment i was wondering/hoping whether its just ”fly rust”. But it’s genuine rust of course.

i think i’m gonna get the bottom treated at some corrosion prevention expert. Have them clean, apply some good stuff to stop the rust and then something on top. And hope for the best. Here old cars need to go trough inspection every year and they do check the bottom carefully if they suspect its rotten. Not sure how eagerly they stick screw driver to Prius bottom though ”because it’s high voltage beast”