I was informed this morning that you could take baby wipes and pour drain o in the container,let it soak and then use the wipes and solution to remove the old factory film off stainless steel and get a nice shine after simply wiping in on.My source said he seen a fella named Resto Dan on You Tube Now don't think i am hating on any body.I am not trying to start a DRAMA thread,just wondering if any body here has been this and if it works.Sound to good to be true
give it a shot on a small spot. if you have drain-o and the wipes its a free experiment, if not you're only out like 6 bucks. good luck
if your not careful this could turn into another Dryer Sheet thread... I wonder if Dryer Sheets and Draino would work?
aluminum foil and coke-a-cola removes rust and shine up the chrome. it will remove hard core crap. try on small area first.
From Wikepedia, Drano is this:"According to the National Institutes of Health's Household Products Database, the crystal form is composed of sodium hydroxide (lye), sodium nitrate, sodium chloride (salt), and aluminum." Basically,lye, which is pretty caustic stuff. On the one hand, I would suppose most stainless would be resistant to the effects of lye. On the other, I am not sure I want to mess around with it when other options might be available. If you use it, make certain you label the container and it might not be a bad idea to put the Poison Control Hotline # on the container,too. And, wear eye protection and have eye flush at reach. NaOH is some kind of nasty in your eye.
My wife buys baby wipes, leaves the contianer open for a few days so they dry out, then fills it with a special kind of cleaner so she can clean her demo products for her business. I dont see why draino wouldnt work too.
I don't think stainless has a factory film on it. I've repolished over 1,000 ft of stainless trim in my life, and the only coating I have found is an occasional "hard chrome" layer of plating (no copper or nickel underneath) that polishes right off (and can be reapplied.) Any film may mean the stainless is just dirty. Another possibility is the trim in question is actually anodized aluminum; completely different animal...
thats got to be it. and once it comes off the alum will turn white pretty quick if'n you don't keep polish on it .
CHROMEPLATERJOSH - You are the ONLY guy that I know of that confirms what I have been telling guys about for YEARS. The stainless trim on my 55 DeSoto is chrome plated from the Factory...probably to match all the chrome plated White metal trim. A bunch of stainless trim butts up against some of the pot metal trim. Everybody tells me I'm full of crap...stainless never got plated. Now I know I'm not crazy...
5 Window, you forgot to add wear rubber gloves with it, stuff is pretty caustic. Agreed, might be good to mark the container (or get rid of it when your through), wife won't be happy with you when she wipes the baby's behind with lye! I think Chrome plater Josh has it right, sounds like a way to remove the coating on aluminum trim, not stainless. I use to have an aluminum polishing shop next door, he use to soak some parts in some type of evil acid to get the protective /anodised coating off.
Heres the vid sorry BBOBB I did mean aluminum trim.greyscout (1 month ago) Show Hide 0 Marked as spam Reply Don't "lye" wet wipes and good drain cleaner. Dan is the man, he modivated me to finish my truck- starting to llok great. Repainting now all the trim is done and ready to go back on in two weeks. I'll post pictures then--- again thanks to DAN! restodan (1 month ago) Show Hide Marked as spam Reply @greyscout At first, I did put lye and drain cleaner in the wipes, but it ate up the wipes and then I noticed the lye really never did dissolve that well in the drain cleaner so I tried a stronger drain cleaner by itself and that worked just as well. Also, I soon discovered that you don't have to use a high speed polisher either. I learn new stuff all the time by trial and error. On a 64 I had, it looked like acid took the anodize off a trim part, so that made me try chemicals b4 polishing. greyscout (1 month ago) Show Hide 0 Marked as spam Reply At Home Depot I bought drain cleaner in a black bottle( in a plastic bag). It worked really well. Your right, with low speed or hand polishing worked great, low speed NO heat. Out of every thing on the Web- your information I enjoyed the best. Thank you- Keep informaiton coming. Wisdom comes from experience, knowledge and trial and error! restodan (1 month ago) Show Hide Marked as spam Reply @greyscout Sounds like the same stuff I use. I bought some before it snowed last week, and I am planning to make a video using just that and polish, soon <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TY7mh7sFiyY&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TY7mh7sFiyY&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
Yeah stainless does get plating sometimes; and it is purely for a color match against chromed pieces as there is no protection provided by doing so. It is a layer of chromium applied directly over the stainless. The layer is measured in millionths of an inch, so its very thin, about the same thickness as chrome over nickel on typical plated parts. I usually see it on higher end cars like Caddy, Packard, Lincoln, etc. It is easy to strip and relatively easy to replate after repolishing is done. Back to the original post, there are multiple ways of stripping anodize off of aluminum. We have a hot caustic bath to do it here, as the effectiveness of the old method of using heavy duty oven cleaner is sporatic and can and will cause pitting in the aluminum. It is still a viable DIY method, just be careful. The really nice thing about the hot bath, is that it strips the backside of the pieces as well; which is very helpful when the parts are getting plating.
God damnit. This would have come in REAL handy a week ago... WTF kind of thread title is this??? If you're going to post something worthwhile, it really helps to TITLE the thread appropriately. I'm just mad cause I spent the last week sanding my trim because the oven cleaner trick didn't work. Thanks for posting the tip though. I've still got another car it will come in handy on.
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