JonnyAlpha
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Just added this to my project thread on The Mini Forums UK but thought I'd make a separate topic of it out of interest.
I had a few pieces that I had previously cleaned but could not remove all the rust mechanically so I painted them with Rust Converter.
I have since found that all this does is disguise the rust as opposed to actually removing it so in order to ensure a proper job I had for a while been investigating Electrolytic Rust Removal so I decided to give it a whirl and to my surprise it worked BRILLIANTLY.
A quick search on Google will bring up loads of informative guide so I won't go into the detail suffice to say with a bucket, some wire, a battery charger, water, soda crystals (Washing Soda) and some scrap metal the results are fantastic.
Just ensure that you get the positive and negative connections the correct way around or you will scrap the piece you are trying to clean.
Here's the setup after I moved it from a previous location, this was my second go:
Here's the rust and grunge build up on the waste metal:
And here are the brackets that fit on the back of the backplates and the backplates after an overnight session in the vat:
And here is the backplate after being washed off in cold water and scrubbed with a nylon brush, with a little work with a wire brush. The wire brush is used to remove the bits that have lifted but not fallen off:
Really impressed with the results, back to good clean metal. There is a little area under and around where the Brake Cylinder fits in at the top of the pic but another couple of hours will probably remove that.
Here is a close up of the area concerned, it also shows how the rust deep in the pits gets shifted, absolutely impossible with a wire brush and even if it was you would remove so much good metal along the way.
As I didn't have time to bung them in again once they where dried off off sprayed them up with WD40 (very prone to rust in this state) wrapped them in a poly bag and newspaper and stashed them away.
The Backplate was in a pretty poor state when I first dismantled it and the above is a 500% improvement, well happy.
Here are the brackets, good enough to paint:
And here is a pic of the waste metal showing all the crap that has come off of the Backplates, i'll clean it off and re-use it on the next batch:
I had a few pieces that I had previously cleaned but could not remove all the rust mechanically so I painted them with Rust Converter.
I have since found that all this does is disguise the rust as opposed to actually removing it so in order to ensure a proper job I had for a while been investigating Electrolytic Rust Removal so I decided to give it a whirl and to my surprise it worked BRILLIANTLY.
A quick search on Google will bring up loads of informative guide so I won't go into the detail suffice to say with a bucket, some wire, a battery charger, water, soda crystals (Washing Soda) and some scrap metal the results are fantastic.
Just ensure that you get the positive and negative connections the correct way around or you will scrap the piece you are trying to clean.
Here's the setup after I moved it from a previous location, this was my second go:
Here's the rust and grunge build up on the waste metal:
And here are the brackets that fit on the back of the backplates and the backplates after an overnight session in the vat:
And here is the backplate after being washed off in cold water and scrubbed with a nylon brush, with a little work with a wire brush. The wire brush is used to remove the bits that have lifted but not fallen off:
Really impressed with the results, back to good clean metal. There is a little area under and around where the Brake Cylinder fits in at the top of the pic but another couple of hours will probably remove that.
Here is a close up of the area concerned, it also shows how the rust deep in the pits gets shifted, absolutely impossible with a wire brush and even if it was you would remove so much good metal along the way.
As I didn't have time to bung them in again once they where dried off off sprayed them up with WD40 (very prone to rust in this state) wrapped them in a poly bag and newspaper and stashed them away.
The Backplate was in a pretty poor state when I first dismantled it and the above is a 500% improvement, well happy.
Here are the brackets, good enough to paint:
And here is a pic of the waste metal showing all the crap that has come off of the Backplates, i'll clean it off and re-use it on the next batch: