I'm looking at a car that's located in Iowa. The car has everything I want, including the color. However, looking carefully at the pics, I saw rust in a few spots on the body and inside the lower part of the passenger door. I'm concerned about bad rust underneath the vehicle. I'll ask the seller about it, but in the meanwhile, can anyone tell me if Iowa uses salt on their roads. Thanks!
Iowa Roads
- Thread starter Shel_B
- Start date
Yes! Especially in the bigger cities. The snowfall isn’t as much as WI or Michigan, though. In small towns they use sand or a sand/salt mix. Look very carefully at shock/strut/spring mounts, frames/subframes, fuel and brake lines, etc.
Short answer - yes. Consider it part of the rust belt.
Yes, lots.
Lots and lots and lots...
Lots and lots and lots...
The good news is that the tires should be in good shape, because there is not one twisty road in that entire state.
What?!?!?! We have one...
Snake Alley is a street located in Burlington, Iowa, which was built in 1894. In 2017, Ripley's Believe It or Not! recognized the street as "Unbelievably Crooked" and the #1 Odd Spot in their Odd Spots Across America Campaign.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Alley_(Burlington,_Iowa)
Similar: (BTW, Snake Alley is mentioned in the article linked below)
https://www.inside-guide-to-san-francisco-tourism.com/lombard-street-san-francisco.html
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I stand corrected! 
When I was a kid we drove from WV to the western part of IA - near Dennison. I swear we drove in a straight line through all of IN, IL, and IA.
When I was a kid we drove from WV to the western part of IA - near Dennison. I swear we drove in a straight line through all of IN, IL, and IA.
Lots of salt and lots of gravel roads. Gravel beats the heck out of the body around the wheel, which opens wounds and salt finishes the job. This car may have never been driven on gravel, but I just want you to be aware it is possible. I would ask for detailed pictures around the wheel wells, which will show the story.
I took a closer look at the pics and saw rust around the wheel wells:
Sorry for the rough image ... I had to blow up the original quite a bit. I'll pass on this puppy. Thanks for the heads-up!
My advice to you is to forget about it it already has cancer. Iowa is definitely in the rust belt as soon as one flake of snow hits the road. They're out putting salt or even worse salt brine down. You don't want that car
Here in MI they salt the roads when its 40 degrees and the sun is out, Apparently there is only one setting on the spreader and that is "wide open" there are times when the salt on the road is thicker than the snow that was on it. nothing surprises me.
Here in eastern Iowa they use liquid salt before forecasted storms. That 
is awful! They use granular salt during and after storms. Like someone else said the plow has 1 setting, full on. In fact the DOT doesn’t use spreaders around here. There’s a channel running out the back of the dump bed into the tire tracks!
Just my $0.02
is awful! They use granular salt during and after storms. Like someone else said the plow has 1 setting, full on. In fact the DOT doesn’t use spreaders around here. There’s a channel running out the back of the dump bed into the tire tracks!Just my $0.02
Here in Virginia I'd had a layer of salt on the windshield of a car parked 90 feet from the road. And that salt was just what was blown from the road by the wind.
I've also seen where the road is white from the multiple salt trucks that have passed through because they don't bother to turn the spreader off when the road has already been salted. And I've seen piles of salt from where they apparently were sitting parked for a while and left the spreader on.
I grew up in IA and live in NE now. The roads are heavily salted here and rust is a big problem.
Trust me, I live in Iowa and it's one of those "rust bucket" states. If snow or ice are predicted, they spray a premix the night before. Then the plow trucks put down bunches of salt when plowing. The only roads that don't get it are gravel in my area. Again, that alone destroys vehicles as well, like wwilson mentioned.
Yes Iowa and South Dakota as well as Minnesota are terrible for salt. Some years they barely use any and this year it's Salt City. Wow I just noticed this post was from last May me bad.
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