Rust and chrome. Shudder.
I had been cruising through the net reading different forums about restoring bikes. Came a cross a thread where a guy said he could get rid of rust on chromed parts. He was dipping them into oxalic acid. I thought yeah right. He and a few others in this thread said it worked. So I hunted some down. I will give it a go. If it doesn't work I have only wasted a few doolars.
So I went and bought a bottle of Reviva http://www.intergrain.com.au/reviva.html which is mainly oxalic acid. This is used on wooden decking etc. It draws the water out off the wood. So it should draw rust out as it is water reacting with metal.
I did my exhaust nuts.
I had been cruising through the net reading different forums about restoring bikes. Came a cross a thread where a guy said he could get rid of rust on chromed parts. He was dipping them into oxalic acid. I thought yeah right. He and a few others in this thread said it worked. So I hunted some down. I will give it a go. If it doesn't work I have only wasted a few doolars.
So I went and bought a bottle of Reviva http://www.intergrain.com.au/reviva.html which is mainly oxalic acid. This is used on wooden decking etc. It draws the water out off the wood. So it should draw rust out as it is water reacting with metal.
I did my exhaust nuts.
Before. You can see the rust in places. I did clean this with some kero as well to help get the road grim/many years of grim off them.
I let them soak in just about full strength Reviva for 24 hours.
You can see where it has eaten the rust away and left bare cast iron. It works to a degree. Sure makes the chrome shiny again.
The fleshy looking stuff coming off the parts is rust. These parts had been in this for no more than 5 minutes when I took this photo.
Here is a very good footnote from off Chop Cult forums.....
You probably know this from researching it... but if not and for others curious, keep the acid away from aluminum or it will eat it up with a quickness. I don't know if they mentioned it... but it's a good idea to spray those parts down with or dip them in a mixture of water and baking soda to neutralize the acid after the cleaning... then give it all a nice oiling, if you aren't going to paint to prevent flash rust or you'll eventually be back where you started from.
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