So you don't salt the roads?

:chin: Seems silly, i know, but I’ve noticed that they don’t seem to salt the roads here. Rather, they use gravel. How does this affect your cars if you don’t mind me asking?
Ontario is notorious for using salt whenever they can, thus making it a real struggle to keep rust off of your undercarriage. All car get defeated by this eventually. :alright:
What sort of issues do you face here in terms of winter driving, gravel, and overall rust problems?

They do use somesort of salt here…not as much as out east. I still wouldnt drive a s13 in winter…They are prone to rust, VERY prone.

winter is harsh no matter what and where … gravel and salt wil hurt your cars paint and metal over time and not having roads plowed and sanded sucks as well …

winter car / summer car combination is the way to go

damn… i guess you guys have it just as tough here as we do in Ontario. Oh well, optimism never hurts anyone i guess…

ontario HAS to be worse then calgary or anywhere in alberta…salt eats away at cars
so bad…you wont see as many rust buckets here as you will in ontario lol.i could imagine
what winter driven s13’s look like out east…rocks are bad for the cas aswell…but i dobut its half as bad a the salt is

They use very little salt and its mixed with gravel. There are actually talks of not using salt at all because of all the nasty things it does to the surrounding area.

We actually don’t use salt, its another chloride based mineral that works at slightly lower temperatures than salt

No we donnt use alot here. most of the intersection are sprayed with water and then heavily sanded so the sand freezes and sticks to the road untill they are plowed

Hmm in Strathcona County they use salt as I was talking to one of the managers about it. Or at least they call it “salt.”

I bet there’s some calcium in there.

yea and lets not forget what it does to your windshield, fog,headlights … that caught my attention when i moved here, but yeah best combo is winter summer car. or you’ll kick your self in the ass :axe: when you see tha meteorite that came off the “salt” truck and lands right into your windshield.

I agree that edmonton winters are harsh, but they don’t even compare to damge that the salt in east causes, I work at a few dealerships and just about every car from the south whether it be a 1990 s13 or 2006 car or truck they are grose. Every bolt is rusted even the seat rails are white, not to mention what the engine bays look like.

yeah dude … canadian cars in general and especially eastern cars that have seen a few winters are such a pain to work on due to rust on al lthe under carriage

buying the few hundred dollar undercoating is a pain too. :finga:

we use huge ammounts of salt in AB

I was responsible for shipping it out and receiving it this year.

It took us all summer to fill the warehouse and it took 3 weeks to empty it
so that is 8000 tons of salt.

but as some one said above they generally use calcium chloride or around that make up along with the gravel to try and bind if to the snow.
On the sander trucks you will see a tank on the side and that is the solution they use with it when they run out of salt or it is too cold for salt.

Road salt is actualy potash salt, the pink stuff.
and we run out in a month every year.

hmmm, I think it is primarly the use of salt, but what about humidity? Would the fact that it is more humid down east, both in the winter and the summer escalate rust?

Just as a comparison, I used to own a 1992 mazda 323 hatch… if you see these cars around Edmonton, there is usually zero surface rust. Mine came from Nova Scotia, and it was the biggest rust bucket I’ve ever seen. The road noise from rust holes was louder than my stereo could go… :lol:

Id say they use salt, why does my car always have a nice white taint of splash marks… hmm.

Calcium chloide is not salt. The residue is calcium chloide not sodium chloride.

Works the same, rusts the same but please don’t call it salt

Salt is a chemistry term for a acid-base reaction…

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/chemical/salt.html#c3

We’re just lazy and call table salt, salt.