Electrolysis

Hi again

I've started to clean up the rusty donor parts I have for my car.

I read about using electrolysis as a way to remove rust and liked the idea of it because it was cheap, easy, and almost zero elbow grease.

Anyway, the science is far too complicated to explain, in fact after reading several articles about it I'm not sure I even understand it myself. It basically involves submersing the offending part in a container filled with water and a little soda crystals (92p from Tesco). A negative voltage from a small car battery charger is supplied to the piece, and the positive charge is supplied to some good sacrificial steel.

Here's my rather simple but effective set-up after having a brake caliper part submersed overnight. Looks a bit manky now, but the solution is still effective as long as you clean the positive sacrificial steel anodes.

Here's a pic of one of mine. It looks like it's been at the bottom of the north sea for a couple of hundred years, but it was only cleaned a few minutes before this pic was taken, it attracts the crud to it rather quickly. I'll probably get a couple more parts cleaned with this piece before I have to discard it.

Here's a couple of close-ups of the piece I was working on before I started. Pretty grubby aren't they.

Here's the piece after electrolysis, just in the oven drying out.

And here it is after drying, quite an improvement. On reflection I've decided to pop it back in to some clean solution to clean it a bit further.

So now it's just a coat of caliper paint tomorrow and then do all the other parts. I've ordered a rebuild seal kit so by the end of the week I should hopefully have two nice shiny calipers ready for my roadster. I'll try and stick a couple of pictures of the finished article in the next few days.