Cheap side bars rusted badly.

[Droneshadow]

This may have been covered before so excuse me if it has. My T6 had a set of new side bars fitted 3 years ago.
I’d noticed them rusting at either end for a while so thought I’d take them off and repaint or replace.
I was quite shocked to see how badly the have corroded. The brackets were a pain to remove as the nuts had rusted to the bolts on the attachment brackets, this meant they just span round instead of undoing. Ended up taking about two hours to get them stripped off, with lots of cussing and swearing. I’m not going to be fitting any more. The only bits to survive unscathed are the stainless clips, and zinc plated bits, for obvious reasons.
If you are going to fit some, use plenty of protective grease or rust preventer as you go, inside the ends of the tubes as well.
I should point out these were cheap bars, more expensive ones may well be more resistant.

 

[Mixersmate]

Mine are the exact same and I took them off yesterday funnily enough.

I left the brackets on, I’ve cleaned them with a wire brush and will hammerite them tomorrow.

I have some new replacement side bars but I’m toying with the idea of sending them to the powder coaters to get a better quality finish on them before fitting, with a coat of G5 wheel armour ceramic coating that I’ve got lying around.

I’ve also bought some shorty style mud flaps to try and minimise stone chips that damage the coating.

I will definitely be copper greasing the bolts because as you said they were an absolute nightmare.

 

[Eclipse Custom Vans]

This may have been covered before so excuse me if it has. My T6 had a set of new side bars fitted 3 years ago.
I’d noticed them rusting at either end for a while so thought I’d take them off and repaint or replace.
I was quite shocked to see how badly the have corroded. The brackets were a pain to remove as the nuts had rusted to the bolts on the attachment brackets, this meant they just span round instead of undoing. Ended up taking about two hours to get them stripped off, with lots of cussing and swearing. I’m not going to be fitting any more. The only bits to survive unscathed are the stainless clips, and zinc plated bits, for obvious reasons.
If you are going to fit some, use plenty of protective grease or rust preventer as you go, inside the ends of the tubes as well.
I should point out these were cheap bars, more expensive ones may well be more resistant.View attachment 254127

This may have been covered before so excuse me if it has. My T6 had a set of new side bars fitted 3 years ago.
I’d noticed them rusting at either end for a while so thought I’d take them off and repaint or replace.
I was quite shocked to see how badly the have corroded. The brackets were a pain to remove as the nuts had rusted to the bolts on the attachment brackets, this meant they just span round instead of undoing. Ended up taking about two hours to get them stripped off, with lots of cussing and swearing. I’m not going to be fitting any more. The only bits to survive unscathed are the stainless clips, and zinc plated bits, for obvious reasons.
If you are going to fit some, use plenty of protective grease or rust preventer as you go, inside the ends of the tubes as well.
I should point out these were cheap bars, more expensive ones may well be more resistant.View attachment 254127

I doubt expensive ones more resilient these days as they are all steel Powder coated. We used to make side bars out of stainless pipe, brackets etc. but 'we can buy for £200 less' is what we heard. Well this is what you get for cheap...