Rust: How bad is this?

[Martinjmpr]

Living in Colorado I've never really had to deal with rust very much. However, my new-to-me '04 'Burb spent its first 8 years in Wisconsin.

Got under it yesterday and saw this.

That crossmember looks pretty bad to me but I'm just wondering how it compares to some of the rest of you.

So what should I do next? Try to wire brush the rust off as much as possible and then coat it with something? Everything else looks OK and there's very little rust on the body (just on the bottoms of the inside door panels.)

I plan to keep this truck at least 3 - 5 years, and it's paid for so I don't mind spending some money and time mitigating the rust.

I'd drop the spare tire and look at that but unfortunately I found that I don't have a jack handle or lug wrench so I need to get that first.

Thanks in advance!

 

[07Burb]

take down the spare, knock of the scale with a grinder and wire wheel and coat it with some POR15 (or similar) and it'll be just like new. Looks worse than it probably is but I wouldn't let it go much longer.