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I decided to try the vinegar trick on my brake drum and brake parts when I was replacing my wheel bearing a couple of weeks ago. Here's the result. The dirty photo is after it had been soaking in vinegar overnight, right before cleaning it with a rag and a light wire brushing. The clean photo is the result. The rust was just sitting on the brake drum as a thick scum after the soaking, it was amazingly easy to take off.

BEFORE:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-8/1 ... %20024.jpg

AFTER:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-8/1 ... %20026.jpg

I purchased the generic vinegar from Superstore for $2.20 for 4 liters, how can you go wrong at that price!?

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Whoa! I think you might just have saved me a lot of trouble with the rear bumper beam.

Damn, that is pretty sweet.I might not bother with electrolysis anymore.

Wow, there's something I haven't seen before. Very cool, and thanks for sharing with us!

There's another post here about a month ago or so I think about using malt vinegar to remove rust completely but I think they only soaked it for an hour or so. Let me find it.

Yeah, I've heard of it before, but imagined the results were far less dramatic.

wow that is amazing! thank you for sharing!

kimokalihi wrote:There's another post here about a month ago or so I think about using malt vinegar to remove rust completely but I think they only soaked it for an hour or so. Let me find it.

Yea, I posted it.

Damn, does this work! My rear bumper beam was a nasty mess and after looking all over for a cheap plastic trough big enough to use as a tub to soak it in like an idiot, it finally dawned on me that I already had one—the rear bumper cover. So I tipped it on its end, lined it in a trash bag, put the beam inside, and poured 3 jugs (probably about a gallon and a half each) of cheap white vinegar from BJs, plus 2 or 3 jugs of water to make up the extra volume. Left it for a few days and it took it down to clean metal for the most part, a wire brushing required to get some of it clean, and most of the beam looks great and doesn't even have any orange peel texture the interwebs warned about. Had to flip it to get the back side, so I'm waiting for that to work its magic and then I'll be able to go after the one stubborn part—the lip where the bottom of the cover screws onto the beam. But that lip was truly horrible and there's already a good amount of it that's shiny metal now. For anything the results are very good—for about $11, it's incredible!

Nice. I am going to try this with some stock SS brake calipers and hopefully lots of other neat rusty parts that would have been thrown away. I can't wait. I thought you were supposed to use malt vinegar or something?

It's all the same, malt vinegar is just darker in color. It's the acid in the vinegar that does the cleaning. If you want it to clean quicker, use pickling vinegar as it has a higher acid concentration. It's costs considerably more, though.

Here's the link to the tutorial on malt vinegar:

http://www.cookhaus.co.uk/vinegar/index.htm

I wouldn't bother with stronger, personally. I should have taken a picture of how rusted some of this bumper was—it's amazing how it took it down to shiny metal in about 3 days. Even the left over paint bubbled off like the skin of a torture victim dumped in boiling water. The white vinegar I used said something like 5% acid and I watered it down since I didn't buy enough as well. I also threw a few other things into the murk to clean them up. Recoating the inside of this thing to protect it from rusting again will be a problem. I think I'm going to cut "speed holes" in it just for the access to the inside.

When you say "speed holes" I can't help but picturing you with your rear bumper all riced out like a honda guy with all the holes cut through it to let air pass through or whatever their logic is.

It's supposed to be for weight reduction, like on aircraft and racecars before they had exotic materials, and yeah, that's what it would like, but nicely hidden behind the cover.

You can do it ten times faster with muriatic acid, available at your local hardware store. I use a jar of it to clean bolts and nuts in minutes.

That would definitely be a good idea for small parts, especially where the corrosion is relatively uniform, but IMO it's too powerful for something large and relatively complicated like a bumper beam since it would be more difficult to get an even application and, in the case of my beam, the corrosion level varied considerably on the part. I tried the muriatic acid on a fender and was disappointed with the uneven results, which is why I am so amazed that the vinegar actually works at all. But, yeah, the vinegar definitely takes more time, so that is also a consideration depending on what you're doing. I still like the wire wheels when the part allows me to use them, but acid in whatever concentration is a lot cheaper.

Maybe we should have a sticky on corrosion fixes and treatments for steel and for electrical?

When I did concrete work we used it extensively for cleaning and aggregate exposing on large areas. We always used a large garden sprayer to apply it.

I'm thinking that if you had a gravel area you weren't worried about killing foliage, one could use a good sized sprayer to clean a large part effectively. But I see where you're coming from in terms of applying it evenly.

evolutionmovement wrote:Even the left over paint bubbled off like the skin of a torture victim dumped in boiling water.

I think I need to try this!

evolutionmovement wrote:Maybe we should have a sticky on corrosion fixes and treatments for steel and for electrical?

i agree with this statement. are cars are not exactly getting any younger. and as people find them there all rusted out. maybe with some cheap fixes even the most novice guy/gal could pull this off and keep the older subarus on the road longer.

I can setup a sticky. This thread would be in there. Are there any other threads already out there that you guys would want to include?

Other question, which forum should it go in?

Misc.

Going to be at Costco, maybe they have cheap vinegar

I got my Mustang jugs (5 liters) at BJ's for $3.xx each.