As the title suggests I am using vinegar to derust a block, i.e. water jacket area..First time to use electricity. I have copper wires inserted in various places for electrodes and have the bat charger on 2 amps trickle..Pos to block and neg to electrodes..Room temp is 64° and vinegar is now at 80° and electrodes bubbling pretty good and meter on charger has ramped up over about 3/4 hrs and is about ready to bottom out [short circut] ..Is this as good as its going to be? Should I shut charger off for a while [ overnite?] or go to 10 amps..
I use vinegar without electricity with great results. Have not tried with electrodes, my understanding is that line of sight only( electricity flows between the electrodes and the part that is pos ) not very good for water jackets.
I have heard of guys using this method with washing soda and trickle battery charger. http://www.mrgus.net/2016/08/rust-removal-by-electrolysis.html
I swear I read about it on here? Well I shut charger off right after [7:03 pm] I posted. Took an hr for the electrodes to stop bubbling, maybe cause they were warm..I just turned charger back on and meter almost pegged like when I shut it off and electrodes stared bubbling right away..Shut back off and used brite led and seems to have done pretty good.. Gonna leave o'nite and check tomorrow..Should be clearer.. Pic is when I first uncapped the block..Dug and chipped out as much as I could before my vinegar attempt..
I tried the trickle charger and Arm n Hammer cleaning powder (not soda). Got an old crate at work and put a plastic drop cloth in it to hold water. Placed a fender off a Chevy pickup in it and turned it on. Don't remember how long I let it run, maybe 24 hours. While I could see a difference, the metal looked kinda black. Decided that by the time I derusted all the sheet metal I would probably wear the charger out. Maybe I didn't do it right. Maybe needed more current. Decided it wasn't worth the effort........at least the way I was doing it.You can see some videos on Utube. I'm thinking about an ultrasonic cleaner for smaller stuff like carbs.
i filled my engine with citric acid and sealed it up...occasionally spun the water pump and after a period of time dumped it all and flushed the motor and you should have seen the crap that came out.... now that the motor is in use i never have overheating problems in fact car runs too cool
I'm a big fan of citric acid also. The parts I've done I'm able to wire brush after the soak so I don't know how it would work in a water jacket.
I've done the pure white vinegar soak on small rusty parts with great success. Also Oxalic acid soak on small chrome parts, works. Never tried the electrode method.
I've used both, but never together. Vinegar works really well. So does the electrolysis method, but I thought you needed the soda to make it most effective. I don't think more power is needed. Slow and steady. Also, are you sure you have the -/+ hooked up correctly? Isn't it negative to the part you want to de-rust?
No, got to flow from rust to electrode. I am going to dump out the vinegar and see what it looks like..I don't get why it's passing so much current after only 3 or 4 hrs..
Running polariy backwards for a few minutes cleaned the electrodes. Dumped out vinegar [puke brown!] and flushed best I could..No shiny metal [clean] but no loose rust either..Had a little CLR so poured it in..Added some Diet Coke [why not?] and the rest with the white vinegar..Fired charger up and made bunch of foam which I wiped off every hr or so, lot of junk in the foam... Charger again started low and by about 3 hrs was ready to peg so shut it down.. I will take some pics once I get it cleaned up and post.
Pic 1, 2, 3, is first try with Vinegar..4, 5, 6, 7 is with Mix and end result..Looking threw core plugs holes above spark plugs/combustion chambers the jacket looks like around the cylinders ..Should be ok.. I hope!!
next time if not what you used try pickling vinegar it has a higher percentage strength 2 versus 5 or there abouts
Pics show copper wire that I hung about into the water jacket area, insulation stripped where immersed in vinegar.
I used iron rods whenever I used the charger one positive the other negative.used a 10 amp charger used this method on several projects worked very good.used washing soda (arm and hammer)not sure this would work in your case (iron block)the thing with the rods being the rust flowed to the one rod - + I do not remember point being when crud built up shut off charger remove rod rinse off and repeat.if oily-greasy need to clean off.some where on site there is info.I did not find bigger charger worked any faster
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