I have used products called " Aludine/ Alodine" and Aluprep to clean and prep corroded diamond plate decks in a few of the yachts I have run. I can not believe no one has brought up Flitz, use it with a 3m green pad ,for the really corroded spots use a wire brush to rough clean.
Spray your oven cleaner on it and leave it on. Then tell me how good it is. As I said earlier, sodium hydroxide, (the active ingredient in oven cleaner) Digests aluminum. It eats it. Hard cold scientific fact. I use it all the time to remove anodizing and can show you the digested and eaten through valve cover off a top fuel dragster which is now a piecve of expensive s****. If you think that qualifies it as an aluminum cleaner carry on. I call it dumb advice for any oner that wants a result. But who the **** am I?
Another good source for sodium hydroxide is liquid drain openers, like Liquid Plumber or Drano and others like them. I used to use that stuff at work when I needed to remove/dissolve thin aluminum coating from stainless steel. The coating came from vacuum deposition, we used aluminum to test the deposition systems used mostly in the semiconductor industry. The inside of the stainless steel vacuum chambers have stainless steel sheetmetal shielding inside that you can remove and clean during machine maintenance. This same vacuum deposition/metalizing process is used to coat the 'chrome' parts in a 1/25 scale model kit with shiny aluminum.
I didn't say to leave it on. The idea is to let it eat a few mils off the surface of the metal and then neutralize it. Aren't we defensive. The mag wheel cleaner is doing just that. I'm going to have to try that on the other manifold that I have yet to do. pigpen
Don't ever use oven cleaner. It will turn a brand new manifold dark, ugly, dull grey in a matter of seconds.
The Jalopy Journal
