Morris Minor Owners Club

Well, after 48 hours sitting in £2 of acid, the first Jumbo Lowlight front brake drum has resurfaced. Not too shabby!

Citric acid is about £7 for 2kg on Ebay so I poured a load into a plastic storage tub and left it to work. Seems to have stripped all the rust off without affecting the steel below. Almost good enough to go back on without the working faces being scoured with a scotchbrite pad but I'll give it a once-over.

Will be interesting to see how well it does on an engine block.

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That's good to know. It would be an ideal way of cleaning up a handful of nuts and bolts.

Impressive results for barely any labour. Well done.

Ordered some today to see how it works on a load of bits, Do i need to degrease all the parts first and is there a ratio of product i should use, i pressume gloves and goggles would be needed.

If you want to see 'crazy' rust removal, place the rusty bit in a plastic tub, add an egg cup of acid powder and then boiling water. The acid is basically what you use to make sherbet so you can eat it. Hurts to get it in any deep cuts but isn't a big problem. I don't use gloves and I fill up plastic buckets with water and add a half teacup of acid for a long soak or double if it is particularly rusted. Degreasing sounds a good idea but usually the oily bits are the bits with no rust. Wash any degreaser off before dunking in the acid.
I bought about 10KG of old stock whitworth nuts and bolts with lots of surface corrosion. 2 hours gave me some good-as-new hardware that was quickly washed and oiled otherwise it would have re-corroded very fast with flash rust.

Certainly quicker than treacle and probably doesn't smell as bad

This sounds quite a safe way to derust, pity i can't get large sections of cars in it. If using hot water gives it a boost i will try it, and now i am think of using an old fibre glass bath as a soaking tub for bigger parts.

Google Citric Acid and learn about it. You will find it is in a lot of our food, I use it for bread making and home brew beer so it is quite safe. The usual cautions about getting it in the eyes though, it will sting (cuts too).

I found a large plastic tub and put in a few beelte suspension bits, It has been 48 hours and the bits that were shinny have gone black, the smell of the water is bad so something is happening.

Good to take the bits out occasionally and wash/scrub them with a stiff brush or a bit of Scotchbrite. Gets the crud off so the acid is in direct contact.

I have given them a shake and a brush off with an old kitchen wash up brush, The mix is still bubbling so i guess it will keep going, It all looks very good so far.

I have to say results are amazing, i had a few bits off rust left, but when i washed the parts off the rust fell away, it seems to have softened all the brackets and nuts and bolts i left in have come up like new, best way if cleaning parts i have used yet.

Result!

Got any photos???

disposal of the "acid bath water"afterwards?

what is the right way to do it? Or can you just Keep using it?

The acid is a food product, you can eat a handful of it, so I assume it is safe to dispose of it down the drain. It might even help to clean the drains out.

It does seem to lose power once it has turned the water a dark rusty brown. For the fastest de-rusting, use hot water. For the brake drum in the first picture I used a quantity about the size of an egg in about 25 litres of cold water.

I will take some pics and upload, sadly i forgot the before pictures, but i have a few cast iron parts i want to clean including a rusty iron pan we left out, and i think it should be safe in the drains, or maybe i can make some rusty lemon sweets.

I have managed to finf time to post a pic of my results, i am very happy but i have learned something, a few parts i dipped have machines parts that were already clean, as i was stuck for getting all the bits in i left the tail end of a clean part sticking out and there is a reaction right where it was sticking out the water like a tide mark but it has eaten into the metal very slightly, so lesson learned always submerge totally

Wow impressive results

Really good news about citric acid.
There is another acid - phosphoric - which may be used. This is available from farm suppliers, it is used for cleaning cow milking machines and is called Milkstone Remover. The advantage with this acid is that it phosphates the metal after removing the rust. Phosphating is used as a standard pretreatment prior to painting. The acid is best used warm and the steel is dipped in for a few minutes. It may be dried off and painted, preferably with an etch primer. The steel will not go rusty after phosphating, so needs no immediate further cover. Disposal is a little more difficult, dilute with a lot of water and feed it down the drain. And don't try drinking it?
Colin

I was showing my citric acid results to a neighbour and he mentioned phosphoric acid as a rust killer, so i am going to try it aswell.