Rust repair
Magnesium chloride keeps I-70 open and quietly destroys everything that drives on it. We cut out the rot, treat what's left, patch in real metal and seal it — no filler over a problem.
What's happening under there
CDOT treats the I-70 corridor with magnesium chloride brine because it works at temperatures where rock salt doesn't. It's also hygroscopic — it pulls moisture out of the air and holds it. That's the property that makes it effective on the road, and it's the same property that makes it brutal on a vehicle. Road salt dries out. Mag chloride stays damp, which means the electrochemical reaction that turns steel into iron oxide never gets a break, even on a sub-freezing day in a dry garage.
It gets everywhere: into seams, behind rocker panels, inside the tailgate, up into the wheel-well liners where it packs into the pinch welds, and along the frame rails where it sits on top of the factory wax coating until that coating fails. By the time you can see rust bubbling through paint from the outside, the metal underneath has usually been going for two or three seasons.
This is why vehicles in Summit County look ten years older underneath than the same model in Phoenix, and why a clean-looking used truck bought locally deserves a very close look at the rockers and cab corners before money changes hands.
How we do it
There's a right way and a fast way. The fast way looks fine for one summer.
Rust spreads under paint well past what's visible. We open it up and keep going until we're into clean, solid metal. The repair area is always bigger than the spot you were worried about — that's the job being done properly, not a shop padding the bill.
Perforated or heavily pitted metal comes out. You cannot chemically convert your way out of a hole, and filler bridged over rot is a repair with a countdown on it.
New metal, shaped to the panel and welded in. Butt-welded where it shows, lap-welded and sealed where it doesn't. Not fiberglass, not a bonded panel over the old one.
Weld-through primer at the seams, epoxy primer over bare steel, seam sealer where the factory put seam sealer, and cavity wax inside the closed sections so it doesn't restart from the inside.
Blocked, primed, sealed and painted to match, then blended into the surrounding panels.
If one rocker is gone, the other one is on the way. We'll tell you what's worth getting ahead of with an undercoating or cavity treatment while it's on the lift.
Prevention
If your vehicle lives here year-round, a few habits genuinely extend its life. Wash the underside, not just the paint — a touchless wash with an undercarriage blast, every couple of weeks through the winter, does more than anything else on this list. Do it on a day above freezing so the water drains instead of freezing in the seams.
Keep the drain holes at the bottom of the doors and rockers clear; a zip tie once a season takes thirty seconds. Touch up rock chips before spring instead of after — a bare chip on a leading edge in November is a rust spot by April. And if you're buying a used vehicle that's spent its life in the mountains, get underneath it with a flashlight and a small hammer before you buy, not after.
For a vehicle you plan to keep, an annual cavity wax and undercoating treatment is cheap compared to a pair of rocker panels.
Questions
We won't. Filler over rust looks correct for a season, then bubbles and comes back worse because the corrosion never stopped — it just got a dark, damp place to keep working. If budget is the constraint, tell us and we'll prioritize the areas that matter structurally.
Far more variable than any other service we offer, because the price is set by how much sound metal is left. Surface rust on a wheel arch is a modest repair. A pair of rocker panels and cab corners with patch panels and refinishing is a real project. We can't quote it honestly from a photo alone, but a photo tells us whether to be optimistic.
Depends entirely on location. A bubbled fender is cosmetic. Rusted frame rails, suspension mounting points, or the metal around seat belt anchors are not, and we'll tell you clearly which category you're in.
Sometimes the honest answer is no. If the frame is compromised and the body needs four panels, we'll say so rather than take the job. If it's a truck you like with two bad rockers and a solid frame, fixing it is usually cheaper than replacing the truck.
A properly applied cavity wax or lanolin-based coating, reapplied periodically, works well. A thick rubberized undercoating sprayed over existing rust is worse than nothing — it seals moisture in and hides what's happening. Application matters more than the product.
Also worth a look
Free estimate
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Serving Silverthorne, Frisco, Dillon, Breckenridge, Keystone and the rest of Summit County.