Rust. Never. Sleeps. It can, however, be smacked upside the head, thrown in the trunk of the car, taken down to the river, and left to fend for itself for a little bit.
There are a number of ways to handle the unintended oxidation of Iron: Amputation. Sand blasting. Stabilization and Painting…and what I’ve been playing with here: Chemical removal. I’m using a product called safestrustremover.com…from a company called, oddly enough, safestrustremover.com.What’s happening here is a process called chelation (well described here)
You can remove rust with Muriatic Acid…it’s some pretty nasty stuff.
You can remove it using Coka-Cola or Moleasses…sticky!
This stuff is odor free, skin safe, septic and sewer safe and quite frankly appears to work just as well as they claim it to!
Part before dipping:
Part after 30 minutes:
Four Hours:
Next morning, after a light wire brushing:
Now, here’s the rub: This piece had been originally painted. The non-painted parts started to rust. When the rust was removed, you’re left with clean, but sparse, paint…meaning you’ll a: have to re-paint, but b: get all the old paint off first. This compound did not, in any way, harm the rubber seal, and is supposed to be plastic, glass, rubber, and metal safe. You can derust many assemblies by setting up an irrigation system, where the fluid is collected, run through a pump, sprayed against the area to be cleaned, and reclaimed.It’ll even uncover grease marks from the car’s original manufacture:
(THIS ISN’T BELFRY…it’s just an example) Before:
(Again, not Belfry!) After:
That’s the eventual plan for Belfry:
Especially in areas that cannot be otherwise disassembled first. There is a concern for keeping sprayed water out of the interior of the car, and there will be some time spent with a rattlecan and a lot of masking afterwards. Lastly, this is for the frame and engine compartment, no miracle process in the WORLD will bring back the fender-wells…those have to be rebuilt the ol’fashioned way.
(an exhaustive conversation on this and other methods of removal are here: http://www.crankshaftcoalition.com/wiki/Rust )
