I thought it would go down well on this forum.
As said before this is robby's, i have CnP'd it
****************************************************************************************************************************************************
I'm fiddling with ways to sort out rusty metal without having to resort to a wire brush at the moment. Assorted things can work - coca cola is meant to be good - but a tried and tested method is electrolysis.
We all did this in GCSE chemistry, apart from the retards, so you have a rough idea of what's involved already - an anode, a cathode, and some electrolyte.
Most important things - this method is safe, easy, and requires no real work to shift the rust. If you manage to blow your garage roof off with a massive hydrogen pocket, I'll laugh and then come and piss on your dog.
This is for cleaning iron and steel components. I can't comment on aluminium, because I haven't tried it. Might work. Don't chuck your entire frame in just in case. If you are cleaning up aluminium or alloy, you should use a similar metal as the bit that gets worn away (positive/red clip bit).
You shouldn't use stainless steel as your erody bit, and I would prefer not to use it in there at all. Releases nasty chemicals apparently.
You will need:
-- A fair sized plastic container - storage box works well. Must be plastic, metal may get dissolved away or stop the reaction from working by completing the circuit.
-- A power source. You want low voltage and current. A bike battery charger is ideal, I had similar results from a car battery. If you can get a shock off it, its more power than you need.
-- Some scrap iron or steel. This will be the bit that gets eroded away. Iron reinforcing bar works well and is cheap. I used some steel tube offcuts. You will connect this to the positive (red) clip.
-- Soda crystals, as used to wash clothes and things - as your mum. You'll need one or two handfuls to with about 50 litres of water. This is a normal size for a storage box. It isn't a precise thing, and its ok to use too much.
-- Chain or similar to dangle the part to be cleaned into the electrolyte. Wire isn't so good, and you don't want to put copper in there. Of course, if I didn't have chain lying around I would use wire.
-- Assorted clamps, jump leads, etc, to share out the current and stop stuff falling into the electrolyte.
What to do
1. Have a smoke. This is a quick process, you have time. Smoke two if you feel like it.
2. Fill your large plastic container with water. Set it down somewhere out of the way. Add soda crystals - a couple of handfuls.
3. Take your sacrificial iron or steel rods and arrange them around the edge of the container, clamped. Leave a couple of inches showing above the water line. Your aim here is to not let any of your clamps touch the water.
4. Take the part to be cleaned, and find a way of hanging it so that it is submerged in the electrolyte, and not touching the bottom or your sacrificial parts. Suspend using chain or something conductive. If you can't get it all underwater, this is ok. You can do one end at a time and this process will not leave a tidemark.
5. By now you have everything that is going to react sitting under water. Connect your sacrificial electrodes together (the more the better).
6. Take your power source. Connect the positive (red) lead to the sacrificial electrodes. Connect the negative (black) lead to the part to be cleaned. Do not f*** this bit up. Plug in the power source, if its a charger.
7. You should see lots of tiny bubbles in your solution within 15 seconds. The water will be pretty dirty within 20 mins. The whole process can take days, see my pics for why.
My experience with it:
1. Take a front suspension upright from a Ford Sierra. This has spent 15-20 years getting rusty and dirty. The brown toad is in fact a solid, 1-2mm thick coating of rust and dirt. Wire brush didn't scratch it.
2. Set up as explained above, after 5 minutes of reacting. Notice I am using a tub too small, so the part is not fully submerged. Also note two sacrificial electrodes, to make the toad coming off the part being cleaned go in two different directions.
3. Same set up, transferred to a deeper container and using. Also moved from using a big battery pack to a small charger, for ease of walking around it. This is after 3 days of reacting. The water will look like this after about 24 hours, and not look much worse subsequently.
4. The upright after 4 days in the soup. It has shed a coating of 1-2mm across its entire surface, the last bits of which I flaked off while drying it with kitchen towel. I can now see the factory stampings and markings again. The black coating can be rubbed off with a scotchbrite finishing pad prior to painting.
****************************************************************************************************************************************************
Kudos to robby.
Peace
