I did not realize that the price of Evapo-rust varies depending on where you are. Here in Joplin, Missouri it is $20 per gallon at Harbor Freight and I use the 20% off coupons that they bombarded everyone with a few months back to get it for $16. FYI, I've been using it on heavily rusted headlight buckets and it does get the heavy rust off eventually (a day or two of soaking), but light rust comes off almost immediately and leaves metal so shiny it looks polished. Good stuff for smallish parts. (But not for dipping an entire '59 Plymouth. You are my new hero, big M!)
I wanted a plastic tank so I could use it for either electrolisis or molassis. The larger tanks come with a drain bung in the bottom. That is the reason I elevated it. The tank is located within 20 feet of the sewer drain and could be drained there or as someone said, it could be put on the garden. Input??
Be carefull if you use the prep and etch.I found out the hard way it will it eat die cast.Also if other parts come in conact with each other the tend to etch the shape in the finish.These parts were left in a bin overnight and were rusted pretty good.
Phosphoric Prep and Etch from the Home Depot is the Cat's Ass. It's a little pricey, but it takes the rust off better than anything. best part is, it's a rust inhibitor too. I derusted an intake and exhaust manifold 6 months ago, they've been stored in my garage, and no rust in sight. BARE Metal for 6 months and NO RUST. You can re-use, and re-use too. Phosphoric acid is the active ingredient in most of the metal prep and rust removal product out there. it will eat the rust and not the metal. works in minutes, not weeks like molasses. I have used electrolysis too, mainly to derust the inside of my gas tank. Works great, because the gas tank is the holding tank and the cathode at the same time, just hang a piece of rebar down inside, as the annode (or is it the other way around?) worked like a charm.... clean bare shiney metal.
NORSONAUTO, Thanks for all the info! Molasses around here is $30 for a 5 gal bucket! I figure I'll need a good 15 gallons. The wife and I are taking a little road trip heading east in 2 weeks. I think I'll cross the border into Nevada. Bet I can pick some up alot cheaper than $30. I think there's no sales tax over there. I'll need a container too. I just pulled the motor out of my truck otherwise I'd go grab this. It's in the free section! http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/zip/1931368168.html
Evintho One of the parts that I now have in the "soup" Is a very badly rusted rear body panel. It is very badly pited. Its been soaking for 5 days and after checking I'm pretty sure there will be no holes in the face of the part. Electrolisis might have done the same job, but with the molassas there is no additional scrubbing needed. The part is ready to prime. Norm
Pulled the parts out of the "soup" after 7.5 days. Pictures show the results for the cowls and quarters. Had to put the door and back panel back into the mix. They were too badly pited to clean up in 7 days. Will pull again in 2/3 days. Also put in three quarter panels and another door. Pictures will show some areas that didn't clean entirely. This was caused by air pockets. The '25 cowl was laying engine side down on the bottom of the tank. I may finish cleaning with a wire brush.
Wow! I'm convinced. Molasses really does the job! Let's see what I can pick up in Nevada next week. I'm thinkin' I'll just build a 3'x4'x3' box out of scrap 2x4's and OSB then drap an old pond liner over it. 15 gallons of molasses mixed at a 7:1 ratio outta do the trick.
I have a 59 El Camino that suffered a dash fire a couple of decades ago, then sat outside. This made for a lot of surface rust. Too big and heavy for an immersion tank, lots of vertical surfaces too. I wet down the area I wanted to de-rust, then put a flannel rag over it and wet the rag through, brushing out bubbles with a semi-soft brush. A spray bottle makes it easy to keep the rag wet. Even on a hot Nevada day I had no problem keeping the rag covered area wet for the recommended thirty minutes. Area's without the rag just ran off and dried, the chemical did nothing. Where I kept the wetted rag in place the rust was totally removed, it looked like a commercial for the product! I can do this for small manageable area's, and over complex shapes, much easier than trying to do a large area or immersion. I will touch up small joints or inaccessible areas with my sand blaster. No worry about warping panels, no need for large quantities of chemicals to be bought at one time.
Does anyone know if you can get the molases in a powdered or "condensed" state? Then just add water to it??
Sounds like you have experience with this product? I have a rusty 50 Merc in the process of rebuilding. I have three rust albums in my profile. Do you think this product will work? I want to get a clean area to work with in the repaired area.
I have used the worlsd safest rust remover, as suggested by High Plains Drifter, and it kicks ass!! It is totally enviro safe, but a bit expensive. $125.00/ gal. which is mixed with 4 gal. distilled water. You have to set up a recovery system(plastic sheet) and small pond pump. I use those small sprinklers that Home Depot sells to irigate the parts. 8 hours us usually plenty of time to completely clean any part. A whole lot cheaper than having it dipped($1,500. for my 30 Tudor body alone, and $75 for each door) .I figure it will take 3-4 gallons (15-20 mixed) to do body and doors.It can be filtered and used over and over, or just dumped down the drain.
I was at a show today where a guy was demonstrating the uses of soda blasting, I wrongly thought that soda blasting would only remove paint, loose rust scale was blasted away leaving a clean surface this and some phosphoric acid metal prep would work very nicely in achieving as new panels.
My 56 was sanded primed then let to sit for years.It had surface rust all over the fenders.Someone suggested CLR so I bought a bottle $5. You can see the results after 3 applications.I put it on ,let it sit for 5 minutes then scrubbed it w/steel wool.Not too bad for $5. There was enough in the container to do both fenders. The last 2 pics are after applying new primer.
just be careful with that molasses you wouldnt want this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster to happin in your backyard!
CLR is mostly water. From the Material Safety Data Sheet: WATER (68-74%), GLYCOLIC ACID (13-16%), SULFAMIC ACID (3-6%), DISODIUM CAPRYLOAMPHODIPROPIONATE (4-7%), ETHANOL, 2-BUTOXY- (1-4%), 1,2,3-PROPANETRICARBOXYLIC ACID, 2-HYDROXY- (1-4%) Glycolic acid is a safe mild acid mostly found in skin care products, which also can be used to remove rust stains, but is no more effective than vinegar, citric acids or molasses. Sulfamic acid works well to remove calcium, lime and hard water deposits. The next ingredient is a surfactant. CLR is a mild and very diluted household product and sold for a relatively high price, because of marketing and packaging. I mentioned this earlier in this thread, but again .... Oxalic acid crystals (aka. Wood bleach in hardware stores) works really well to remove rust and makes gallons of cheap, effective and safe rust remover in comparison. It is safe even with the softer metals and can be reused until depleted.
Ya, I agree... if you can get the stuff locally. No luck around here. All "natural" products. Grrrr I hate having to order stuff!
I guess my question for the POR-15 fans that are telling this guy to just use that, I have a T body in similar condition, and in the pictures you can see, it is rusting through at the rockers, so a repair needs to be made. Now if POR-15 won't stick to smooth surfaces, like you would have after a rust repair, how do you keep it from flaking off in those spots after paint?
Hmmm.... you would think, if they sell it in both hardware stores of my small town in chemically sensitive California, it would be available anywhere. These are the two brands selling the same crystals in 12oz. containers for around $7.
After most of the rust removal methods we've talked about we end up with "flash rust". I've used Prep & Etch to hold back the rust. But, I have a few questions: 1) why do we get flash rust faster than on none cleaned sheet? 2) During repairs the Etch is sanded/burned off. Will it flash rust, like after cleaning or at a more normal pace. 3) continue to apply Etch to worked areas until ready to primer?? 4) Clean off Etch before priming? With what? 5) What can be used in fold-over or pinch areas to keep rust from restarting? Note: rechecked my receipts Prep & Etch was $14.97 at Home Depot and Evaporust was $19.98 at Harbor Freight.
I just had some parts done with soda- Had some pitting like the OP's doors on the bottom side of my doors.Although soda cleaned the paint off excellent,it does'nt do that great with the rust issue shown here.In fact it came out so smooth,I had to go over everything with a DA to give it some "tooth". I'de recommend possibly media blasting. If I would have known what the results were going to be with soda,I would have went another route. Just a suggestion.
Before we powder coat we use a water based "metal wash", after it dries it leaves a film that looks like flash rust. When we first started using this metal wash we were concerned about the "so called" flash rust and found out it wasn't flash rust only the chemical leaving a residue on the surface which doesn't effect the bonding of the top coat. So the flash rust your seeing might not be flash rust. The color of the prepped part when we use our metal wash after it dries is a dark yellow/gold color.
Ok, four days later and the door and rear body panel are done. These parts were really bad. I wasn't lucky on the rear body panel. It has a number of very small pin holes and some very deep pits that could be holes. Any Ideas on how to repair. Anyway here are some pictures. check out the inside of the door shots. How about those pits.
I'm always skeptical about miracle rust removal ideas. That said, I had to try the vinegar thing. I have an old 28-29 A grill shell that's seen better days. I'd like to use it on my '27 T but didn't know if it was worth saving. I have a sand blast cabinet big enough to take the shell but I figure blasting would completely destroy it. I hit an area with a wire brush then rinsed the shell with the garden hose. I flipped it upside-down and poured vinegar in an area where it would pool. The next morning I dumped the vinegar and lightly hit it with the wire brush. I couldn't believe how much crap the vinegar lifted off the surface! I repeated the process over the next few days and I'm down to bare metal that's definitely salvagable! I'm hitting Wal-Mart this afternoon to find something big enough to soak the whole shell, and 20 gallons of vinegar. Thanks for the tip fellas!
I use the stuff a lot...it smells very similar to MetalPrep, and seems to work just as well. I even use it to remove light surface rust on guns...it kills the rust, without attacking or messing up the bluing. Dipping a whole body in it would be difficult, not to mention expensive even at $1/gallon, but you could probably build a wooden frame and line it with plastic sheeting to soak a door or fender. Soaking some rags in it and spreading them out on the larger surfaces may work, as long as you keep it wet.
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