Homemade parts washer

excossack · Post by **excossack** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 8:08 pm

This type
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-8L-GARDEN-BAC ... dZViewItem

teflon · Post by **teflon** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:31 pm

ladaboy wrote:Why would you need that pump business when the VW guy has shown it works brilliantly without one?...

Just over-engineering a simple thing.

"Gromit, we have a problem!"

crb247 · Post by **crb247** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:07 am

Here's the big question though. Does it have to be malt vinegar?

ladaboy · Post by **ladaboy** » Fri May 02, 2008 2:26 pm

And when are we going to find out what happened to John's rusty bolt?

GadgetBoy · Post by **GadgetBoy** » Fri May 02, 2008 2:52 pm

I've heard it called many things but that's a new one!

excossack · Post by **excossack** » Fri May 02, 2008 3:02 pm

Tonight, i plan the reveal.....

excossack · Post by **excossack** » Fri May 02, 2008 6:44 pm

Here are the results.

This is the bolt that went into the vinegar. The vinegar was the left overs from pickling some onions.....mmmmm Ham and pickled onion toastie...
Sorry I digressed.....

All this bolt has had is a run under the tap to wash off and loose crud and then photo'd

Results.
[img=http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/1934 ... sr1.th.jpg]

As an experiment, im trying three other rusty/corroded items. This time in fresh virgin malt vinegar.

New items
[img=http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/7100 ... ur8.th.jpg]

crb247 · Post by **crb247** » Fri May 02, 2008 10:08 pm

Price of malt vinegar here at the closest grocery store was 1.28 for approx 300 - 350ml's... Much more expensive than the plain white vinegar. I'll try white vinegar when i have time and let you know how it works.

My thoughts on it are get a plastic bin and attach a small electric motor with an eccentric to set up a small high frequency vibration in the tub. This should in theory increase the effectiveness of the vinegar. We had a big soaking tub like that at the college that worked fantastic but it was an acid bath.

nitro_warrior · Post by **nitro_warrior** » Fri May 02, 2008 10:22 pm

Vineger is the main constituent of hundreds of cleaning products. All they do is add a "lemon" fragrence.

crb247 · Post by **crb247** » Sun May 11, 2008 2:14 am

How'd your second test turn out?

excossack · Post by **excossack** » Sun May 11, 2008 7:50 am

It worked better that with the used vinegar. I shall try and get some pics sorted later on today. The vinegar changed colour somewhat and left some crud in the bottom of the jar.

Jonno · Post by **Jonno** » Sun May 11, 2008 5:16 pm

nitro_warrior wrote:Vineger is the main constituent of hundreds of cleaning products. All they do is add a "lemon" fragrence.

At work we use a lot of a product called "Pronatur" its an orange based degreaser and works very well on mineral oils/greases and loads of other stuff too.

fon1 · Post by **fon1** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 5:32 am

sorry to come in late, it just missed my attention.
Any vinegar will do. The issue here is that it is acidic, and any vinegar is. You could improve its qualities as rust attacking agent (brilliant to unlock things that are "locked") by heating the whole lot. Just place the parts and the vinegar in a cooking pot, bring them close to boiling and keep them at that tempereture for a while. The only drag with vinegar is that it will attack any rubber and plastic (seals, rings etc.) making them stiff and therefore easy to crack, so take care.
Another cheap ingredient, slightly more acidic is the active ingredient found in solutions we use to decalc cofee machines. it contains formic acid (H-COOH) (E236), which (at least here in greece) can be purchased very cheeply from chemical stores and pharmacies