Electrolytic rust removal -- Results

[2002Targa]

Well, it's the next day and I'm thinking that it works pretty good.

Before:

and after:

After I pulled it out of the bath, I scrubbed it for about 10minutes with a green scotchbrite pad and some OSPHO. It's looking a helluva lot better than it did.

I'm going to try and do the same thing with an old computer powersupply that I have laying around, it should work pretty well.

Here's a photo album of the whole process, check out the pic of the rustyshitsnot that bubbles up to the surface. Pretty alien looking.

http://picasaweb.google.com/2002targa/ElectrolyticRustRemoval02

Good luck if you try to do this, it's painless....and very rewarding.

TK

[eastsidebimmer]

I like the idea of looping them together with jumper cables.

Ben

[Guest Anonymous]

Looks impressive.

Excuse ignorance, but could you have achieved a similar result by using Naval Jelly or phosporic acid?

Thanks

[2002Targa]

Eastside:

I used 4 rods building a frame around the "soup", if you follow the link above there's a series of pics that shows all.

Don:

I've used naval jelly and phos acid before with great results, but even with that stuff you have to somehow scrape or remove the thick scale. Doing this is just set and forget (for a while) and it dissolves the scale and everything. What people say about it being slow is no shit, but if it's something you don't need quickly, it seems to be pretty thorough.

TK

[m20ohtwo]

What sort of electrolyte do you use?

[2002Targa]

arm & hammer baking soda (in the laundry section), I'm using 1tblspoon per gallon, but I've seen it listed as 1 tblspn per quart also. 1 per gallon seems to be doing the job nicely... I have a header in the bath right now...

[m20ohtwo]

Cool, that could make this easy. What was your power source?

[robspeed]

just curious how it did on the inside of the downpipe? you mentioned that it works line-of-sight, so i was just wondering about how it did on the inside?

[dubois]

my educated guess is that the process can't distinguish outside from inside, ie should look pretty much the same, except maybe for the last scrubbing with a green pad, and then again you will never know unless you cut a cross section.

It looks like a simple little handy tool, which could be used prior to plating stuff. I am so glad somebody shared this.

[jkurzner]

Was this hooked up to a standard 12v battery or was there a different power source?

[PSloan]

Will this eat through paint? I'd like to find a way to do this to my spare tire well...

[2002Targa]

you need a constant power source, like an auto battery charger, if you used a car battery, it would drain it down to nothing.

here's a couple links that have full how-to write ups.

http://www3.telus.net/public/aschoepp/electrolyticrust.html

http://www.stovebolt.com/techtips/rust/electrolytic_derusting.htm

I didn't even think about looking inside, I'll take a peek when I get home tomorrow afternoon.

I'm not sure if it would eat through paint, if it did, I'd think it would only do it at the edges of the paint where metal was exposed.

[_z_]

you need a constant power source, like an auto battery charger, if you used a car battery, it would drain it down to nothing.

I'm not sure if it would eat through paint, if it did, I'd think it would only do it at the edges of the paint where metal was exposed.

Thats cool. As for paint, I was de-rusting a hand scythe -- this old antique I found in a barn and it was totally covered in rust. Once it ran for about 10 hours I cleaned it up and could actually see the blue paint left on the blade.

So I dono .. if the rust is under the paint I think it would come off, but regular old paint probably not. But keep in mind you need to make an electrical connection so you'll have to get to bare metal somewhere on it just to make it work.

[jimk]

Unless the solution itself is distructive to paint, I don't expect the electrolytic process to remove the paint and then the rust below. The electrolysis and solution moves the rust where exposed to the solution. Where the paint is cracked it will clean along the cracks.

It's sort of the reverse of the rusting process itself, where the exposed steel was conveted to iron oxide by a cell set up between free air and the metal with a salt solution doing the transfer.

[_z_]

I've noticed too that the electrode gets really really rusty -- and it seems to lose its effectiveness after a while. I have an truck tire ring surrounding the inside of a giant plastic bucket and once in a while I'll pull it out and let it dry off and then hit it with the wire wheel.

Its crazy how fast its eating up this big chunk of metal ..