He is referring to the rust issue that Rams have in geographical areas that have climates with higher humidity like the Midwest, East Coast. This issue may have been resolved on the latest Rams.
The worst problem area was above the wheel openings on the bed. The rest of the truck seem to have less chance of rust. Tailgates have always been a problem for truck manufacturers. With the light gauge steel used on car and truck bodies today, a scratch or loss of paint can turn into a rust hole in a couple of years on any vehicle. So if you scratch the paint to the bare metal, you are asking for trouble.
On the Gen II and III model Rams, the area above the wheel opening has foam material sandwiched between the wheel housing and bed side. The foam traps moisture in it. Moisture can come off the road via the rear wheels or even just from the air. Spot welds in this area are not protected from moisture and are left bare by the factory. That is where it usually rusts, on these spot welds and then spreads over time.
I bought a '04 Rumble Bee Ram 1500 two months ago. Nice looking truck with the black plastic wheel opening protectors on it! If you look under the protectors you can see the rust-though. Rest of truck is pretty sharp.
Two years ago I fixed a 06 Dakota with the same rust issue, in the same area, myself. After cutting the damaged area out, I found the foam that had trapped the moisture. The truck had spent most of its life in North Carolina, yet it was also rusted. They don't get snow or salted roads there.
On the Bee, I am going to have to replace the sheet metal in the rusted out area. Don't waste your time with just bondo and new paint. That cover up will last about six to nine months. Cut out the rusted area and replace it with a new metal patch panel. Or you can replace the whole bed side! One estimate of the latter to fix the bed was about $4000 for both sides at a local body shop.
There is also some rust in the cab corners. The cab corners damage was likely caused by no epoxy enamel reaching the backside of the cab corners at the factory, hence it left the factory as bare metal on the back side and eventually rusted. The solution is to replace the cab corner.
I am restoring the body of a 1978 Lil Red Express pickup. It was stored inside since 1990 and kept clean and dry afterwards. The only places it had rusted out were areas that were not rust proofed with the factory epoxy enamel primer sealer. The factory just couldn't spray it into a few tight hidden areas due to paint and assembly processes used at that assembly plant in that time. Eventually moisture attacked the metal and it rusted from the inside out. There were two areas of rust-the inside front corner of one door and the bottom of one fender between the outside steel and the frame piece that was behind it that adds strength. The other original fender and door were not rusted!
So that is what happened on the 04 Rumble Bee's cab corners-no primer. The corners had been covered up and protected from rock chips by the truck's ground effects package that has since been removed. I decided to protect the Bee and preserve it for future Ram collectors.
The same rust issues (but to a much greater extent) occurred on 1973 and up Chevy and to a lesser extent on Ford trucks. GM used Japanese steel in that period, that had been washed with salt water after it was milled. Fresh water is expensive in Japan. The salt was never rinsed off before the steel was made into body panels by GM. Those panels rusted from the inside out. I detailed used cars and trucks in the 70s and I couldn't understand why vehicles that had been Z-barted had huge holes in them when the truck was only a four or five years old! That's why you seldom see Chevy trucks made in the 70s! They rusted away literally!
I hope that Ram did finally eliminate the rust out issues on the latest generation of its pickups. These are good trucks IMO mechanically and electronically. It's silly to continue building them to rust out in specific areas when its an easy manufacturing and engineering fix.
