fuse box rusty. why?

Hello, I was checking my fuses because my windshield washer don't work, if you can help me with that too thanks. Any way I have a 2005 Focus and notice my fuse box is rusted. I did buy the car used. Is this normal? Thanks

Reply to
lovegoogle
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nope.

I would start looking for signs that the car may have been flooded...

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

I checked with Carfax and nothing but lets say it was why does the car run great. thanks

Reply to
lovegoogle

Because the rust hasn't become a 'terminal' problem 'yet'.

Rust grows, fast. :-(

You need to soak every connection you can get your hands on with something like WD40 which will displace the water and stop the rust for a 'while'.

The connections have sealing skirts, these should be coated with dielectric grease to slow down more corrosion, but a clean of pretty much every connection every couple years will likely be in your future.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's - Gone to the rust pile... Canadian Off Road Trips Photos: Non members can still view! Jan/06
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Reply to
Mike Romain

Try some Must For Rust.

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Scroll down to where it says, Rust Remover/Inhibitor.I have some Must For Rust here, it works great. cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

my question would be where is the moisture getting to the fuse box. I don't know the location of the fuse box on a Focus but some where is a leak getting things wet. Find the leak, clean out as much moisture you can with the products mentionedand you rust problem shouldn't cause any long term trouble.

Reply to
golden oldie

Check the fuse. If the fuse is ok, can you hear the washer pump run when the washer lever is pulled? If not, suspect the pump is bad. If it runs but does not pump fluid check the rubber hoses that connect the pump to the washer nozzles.

Is the fuse box under the hood or inside the car.

If it is inside the car you have a car that was flooded, for sure. I'm very suspicious of this because a 2005 car should not show any signs of rust.

If it is under the hood the car may have been in a flood, or it may have been driven in snowy conditions where a lot of salt was used in roads. Or the previous owner may have been one of those people who frequently steam clean their engine but don't protect critical components. In either case you should check the seals around the box and open it up to dry out.

Reply to
John S.

Hmm. One is always suspicious of this in a used car. Hurricane Katrina is what one tends to think of, but the fact is, lots of floods occur in the US every year, and some of the half-drowned cars are revived and put on the market by the unscrupulous without proper disclosure...

However, some cars are notorious for getting rainwater into the passenger compartment around a failed windshield gasket or as overflow from a plugged-up fresh air duct. (These are under a sort of horizontal grille thing in the cowl just ahead of the windshield -- either behind or under the rear edge of the hood -- and on some models they are notorious for collecting leaves and dirt in sort of a self propelled compost heap in the drain tube.) Sometimes a component you really don't want to get wet, such as a fuse box or a flasher or relay, is in the "flood plain"...

Do you notice an inexplicably damp carpet in the front, or drips of water, when it has been raining -- water that doesn't smell like antifreeze, thus exonerating the heater core? Hmm, I guess an air- conditioning drain tube that has come off at the business end could be another culprit -- after using the a/c, do you notice a puddle of clear water under the car (as you should -- a/c dehumidifies the air, and that's where the resulting water is supposed to go) or does it mysteriously vanish?

You might take out a seat and look under the carpet, and peek in the bottommost part of the trunk too, or maybe find a nondestructive way to get a look at the pressed-board inner surface of the door panel, and see if water has gotten anywhere else it shouldn't. If it was flooded high enough to get the fusebox, chances are that there are symptoms elsewhere that didn't get cleaned up or masked over.

After that it becomes a consumer affairs issue -- how much is actually wrong with the car, and whether you consider yourself to have been ripped off, and what can be done about it in your state.

Best of luck,

--Joe

Reply to
Ad absurdum per aspera

Some of those Katrina flooded cars.trucks/vans were delivered as far North as Seattle to be cleaned up and resold.And the recent floods in the midwest and west (Texas and wherever) no doubt flooded some vehicles.I wonder what will happen to those vehicles? cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

Same as happens with every year's crop of floods, I reckon. Some will get junked.

Some will get sold with proper disclosure of what they've been through, which frankly I consider fair play, though personally I think of either "flood damage" or "salvage title" as semantically equivalent to "keep walking."

And some make their way, via one or more sales, into states that are not so insistent about "branding" the titles of salvaged vehicles (or not so diligent about enforcement) and maybe are weak on consumer affairs in general. Then they show up at Crazy Larry's Pre-Owned Auto Asylum, and the stratum even below *that*, where street hustlers (with a dealer's permit or just a sense of the volume and tactics they can get away with in what seem to be private party sales) peddle the cars that even the bottom tier of car lots don't want.

Caveat emptor, where the first serving of caveat should be the used- car chapters of _Don't Get Taken Every Time_ , followed by other such publications that are available through libraries and state consumer agencies. Also, do a search for the on-the-record facts about a particular car by its VIN before buying (but don't trust that alone; the system is prone to false negatives, and the threshold for entering a black mark against a car is said to vary from state to state). And finally, have an independent mechanic give it an inspection before purchase -- here you are paying for objectivity as well as expertise, since by this point in the process, obviously you want the car.

Best of luck,

--Joe

Reply to
Ad absurdum per aspera

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