The most lightning in the country
The Tampa Bay region records more lightning strikes than anywhere else in the United States, and through summer a thunderstorm most afternoons is the normal pattern rather than an event.
A car is a reasonably good place to be in a storm — the shell conducts around the occupants — but the electrical environment is genuinely harsher than most of the country's. Nearby strikes induce transients, and a vehicle full of modules, sensors and networks is more sensitive to those than a car of thirty years ago.
What tends to show up is intermittent rather than dramatic: a sensor that reads oddly, a module that logs a communication fault, a component that works and then does not. Those faults are frustrating to chase and they are far more often a connector than a module.
Water within minutes
An afternoon storm here can put several inches across a road faster than the drainage can take it, and a routine commute includes driving through water.
What that reaches:
- Wheel bearings. A hot hub plunged into water draws it past the seal as the bearing cools. Repeated all summer for years, it is why bearings here fail before their mileage suggests.
- Brakes. Rotors cool unevenly, and repeated wet-then-hot cycling accelerates corrosion between the hat and the hub — felt as a pulsation and blamed on a warped rotor.
- Low connectors. ABS, ride height and parking sensors.
- The air intake. Water past the filter ends an engine, and it happens every year to somebody following the vehicle in front.
Humidity that never drops
Tampa's humidity is at the top of the national range and the cooling season runs most of the year.
Almost all of the air conditioning compressor's work goes into condensing water out of the air rather than lowering its temperature, so the duty cycle is far beyond what the thermometer implies. The evaporator stays wet, which is where the smell comes from, and a cabin filter on a real interval is most of the prevention.
Humidity is also the corrosion mechanism, since there is no road salt at all. It attacks connectors, grounds and aluminium rather than structure — which is why a Tampa car has a sound underside and green connectors.
Bay salt air on top
The bay and the Gulf put salt-laden air across the whole region. It settles rather than being thrown and it works on what is exposed: caliper hardware, wheel fasteners and anywhere aluminium meets steel.
Anti-seize on the hub face and on wheel fastener threads at every brake job is two minutes that saves an hour, and here it is worth more than most maintenance items.
Nothing in Florida inspects a vehicle, so none of the above is ever checked by anybody but the owner.
Checked