Do You Have Rust??

[Montana_339]

We have enjoyed our 2004 3295RK Montana and have had very few problems. However, we want to alert folks that you may have rust in, and underneath, your rig that could cause you serious problems down the road (pun intended).

In addition to the catches for the bay doors that Stiles Watson recently discussed in his post, we have extensive rust inside and underneath our RV. As we looked over our unit before the warranty ran out, we found extensive rust on the mounts for the propane line and pvc pipes, as well as the propane line pipe, the spring mounting brackets and shackles, portions of the slide-outs, and the stabilizers. We also found rust inside the RV, both in the top fan vents (bath and bedroom), and on the underside of our stove grill.

Our unit has seen only a moderate amount of use and has not been exposed to significant amounts of road salt, chemicals, etc. Some of this rust seems to be due to rusting of what might be called “partially” plated brackets. Hard to say if we got a bad batches of brackets, top vents, etc., or if this is a case of Montana trying to hold down costs or hurry production beyond the point that quality is compromised (per the post by Randall53 on “Montana’s Plight”).

Incidentally, the initial report from our dealer is that Montana is hesitant to fix this problem. We will contact Montana directly and will keep folks posted on our progress. Based upon our experience with our dealer and the conversations on this forum, we’re hopeful that they will do the right thing.

We are also interested in learning if others are having significant rust issues.

[CountryGuy]

The rusted vents, they had a batch of bad ones, we had ONE on our unit, all the rest were fine, never rusted. It was replaced under warranty.

As far as the rest of your situations, someone will come along and give you some insight.

[stiles watson]

Because I was reared on the Gulf Coast, rust has always been a major concern. I find more rust on my unit than my comfort level will allow. So I am on a search to find materials to effectively deal with this problem.

Duluth Trading sells some coating called "Rust Converter" (http://www.duluthtrading.com/items/92727.asp) for about $13 a quart. This stuff has been around for about 20 years. I have used it before with a measure of success. The coating doesn't have much tensil strength so it needs to be painted to preserve the rust inhabition characteristics. This is better than just painting because rust left under the paint continues to develop but now it is hidden. If you are interested, I will leave it to you to peruse the Duluth site to get product discription.

My reason for wanting to find a solution outside of depending on Keystone is that I believe it will be a continuing problem long after warranties expire. I had opportunity to be in a non-Montana dealership recently and found several new, upscale, name-brand units with rust forming on visible metal parts. I put rust and roaches in the same catagory. Gotta just keep fightin'.

[sreigle]

Well, when I first saw the topic my thought was "yeah, **I** have a little rust here and there" but then I realized you mean on the Montana, not on me. Ours has some rust, too, but not a lot. Come warmer weather I'll check it out again. Thanks for the wake up call.

[joe2speed]

I don't see any rust inside the Monty. But like you said under the beast you will find rust. The gas pipes, brackets, hangers even the springs and shackles. This is just life. Keystone doesn't use stainless steel. If it did we would not be able to aford to buy one.

[Montana_339]

An Update:

May be some good news on our rust situation. Talked to the Montana folks and it appears that, in addition to replacing the rusty vents, they will give the dealer additional hours to clean-up and repair the rust underneath (brackets, etc). Apparently the brackets were meant to be plated and some rusted (will likely require removal, sanding down to bare metal, undercoat and paint...). This should at least give a good change to keep the brackets, etc. intact as long as we keep after it. Thanks to all who posted and a special thanks to Stiles for his suggestion. We'll let folks know if Montana indeed comes through for us (we're very hopeful at this point, but need confirmation from our dealer).

ps: We have pictures of some of the rust re the brackets, etc. but no personal website at present (so apparently can't link to them here?). If you want to see a picture or two, please e-mail and also let us know if you have broadband or not.

[315RLS]

I feel like I've got rust but my Mountaineer seems to be holding up better

[Montana_2785]

Well, I've only had our "new" 3575RL in our hot hands for a little over a week and it has been at the dealer waiting on parts for the past two months, but I did already notice that the frame that is visible via the wheel wells was showing rust. This is a unit that has followed the snowbird trek for its 3 year life.

I was thinking that it was more rust than I was expecting to see at this age. I'm going to be dropping the belly pan later this spring for some upgrades so I'll be sure to inspect the interior spaces for any problems.

Thanks for the heads up.

Eric

[Montana_2730]

The rust on any Montana frame component is caused by bad preparation of the metal prior to priming and not enough paint in our case. Since I do not know who paints the frames I'll take a guess and say "Lippert". The guilty party here would be the frame manufacturer. Our rust especially occurred at the welds. Which tells me being a manufacturing engineer someone did not do a thorough job cleaning the welds off after the welding process. We had the dealer spend four hours before signing our contract spraying rusted propane bottle storage, inside of the forward battery compartment, brackets holding plumbing underneath, frame rails, shackles, etc... All the trailers were that way on the lot and we live in Texas. I can imagine a trailer purchase in the north would have more.

I use a product called Jasco rust converter. It comes in gallon jugs and you can buy it at Home Depot for around $15.00. Load it into an hand sprayer and start spraying. Wait a day then spray rusted areas with rustoleum. I have also treated the exposed areas I felt needed special attention with Dinitrol 4140. This is a aerospace and high end automotive undercoating treatment. Nothing would rust if you use this stuff. I think rust will be the never ending battle on our Monty.

[tweir]

My 2-bits worth: In the shop, I use EXTEND----it too, is a rust converter. The stuff comes either in quarts, gallons or aerosol cans. Read the instructions (yeah, I know guys are instruction-challenged...!). Just remove the surface loose rust and douse it with EXTEND and the "conversion" now becomes the primer. They sell this stuff @ NAPA. I think its either made by Permatex or the Loctite company---can't remember! Works OK---use it on our fleet trailers all the time.

[kdeiss]

I have used EXTEND on my boat trailer than painted over stops the rust and does not blead through. Great product !