Real Fiero Tech

I came across a blurb of a bunch of englishmen doing a rapid-resto on a sick friend's lotus.

APPARANTLY, one of them dragged in a plastic 50gal drum, a couple of large iron anodes, and they were using this to strip rust off of steel/iron parts.

Now, I know the theory here, and as luck would have it, I DO in fact have access to a 50gal plastic drum.

Thing is, my grade-9 chemistry memory is failing, and I don't really know how I'd proceed given some half-remembered assumptions and concerns...

1) AC current is useless for this, since the ions would just be jogging back and forth, right?
2) How the hell would I make this at all "safe." I've stood in a puddle of electrified water when our garage flooded. It's not an experience I wish to repeat.
3) What voltage/amperage requirements would I need?
4) I know the anode MUST be iron (replacing FeO(x)- ions with Fe- ions, right?), but I'll be damned if I know what other element the other would need to be so that it doesn't produce anything too toxic or flammable... Zinc maybe?
5) What's to stop me from adding some salts to the mix and plating said parts with a similar setup for increased corrosion resistance?

they did that on an episode of horsepower TV on spike tv. http://www.powerblocktv.com/sites/horsepower/

baking soda and a battery charger with a 2 amp slow charge should work.

A pressure washer and some acid used at the swimming pool will do the trick. Wash the rusty part to get all the oil/grease off, put the acid in a sprayer and soak the rust, wait a bit and pressure wash it off. Whatever rust is left, hit it with the acid again. When it has been rinsed, spray it down with some rust treatment (Extend, Rust Mort), prep and paint. Be prepared for some serious stink.

DO NOT use stainlees steel as it will make toxic fumes.

Gene

scrabblegod wrote:DO NOT use stainlees steel as it will make toxic fumes.

Gene

also puts chromium into your solution so it's illegal to dump the water onto the ground or into sinks.. have to take it to a hazardous material disposal site.

I'm not worried about disposal.

I'm more interested in figuring out what metal would be best to plate parts in to slow down corrosion and/or provide a good solid base for paint.

I know nickel is popular...

I think I'm going to try nickel-plating the dogbone I made for my swap using nickel-chloride and a battery charger. It's looking a little haggard from the moisture, since I never got round to painting it. :salute:

I'll see how that works, and maybe build myself a bigger rectifier...

Although from what I gather in my readings, the slower the deposition, the stronger the coating.

Looks like I'll need two baths.

Step 1) The first will be to "electropolish" the item, which puts the piece on the anode in a Sodium bicarb bath, with a This will strip any rust oxides, as well as strip off a few molecules of iron, leaving a bright, shiny (and rust free finish)

Step 2) Rinse with deionized water, hook up cathode, dump into solution of Nickel Chloride.

Step 3) Soak for one 15m on, 15m off for about 24 hours (w/ help of timer)

Step 4) ???

Step 5) Profit

ecosystem destroyer.

Ass :la:

I didn't mean I'd dump it in my neighbor's pond...

I work for a sustainability company, I've got LOTS of inroads to toxic waste processing facilities.

Besides, the water's the easy part; I'd just throw the block-heater element I have into it and let it perc off the water, leaving the nasty heavy metals in powder form that I can scrape up and either keep for later or dispose safely.

Sounds like a ton of work. My buddy joe turned me on to a product called POR15, this stuff is great. It adheres to rust better than to a clean surface. It's black out of the can, but paintable. And my buddy Sean used it on his CJ a couple months back, accidentally let some dry where he didn't want it- it took 30 minutes with a palm sander and 60 grit paper to get it back down to bare metal.

If you are trying to restore a car you don't want to put Por15 over the rust, you want to get rid of the rust.

I gave up repairing rusty old Fiero's, while I made a ton of cash rebuilding rust buckets, in the end you can never kill rust completely.


Here's my cure for rusty Fiero's
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GO SOUTH YOUNG MAN, GO SOUTH!

I wasn't talking about frame/body components. My car is a coast-car, so it's got very little of either.

The things that I want cleaned/fixed are items that are visible, and that would look better with some sort of corrosion resistant finish on them.

For example, the dogbone I made looked nice when I made it and cleaned it... But bare mild steel doesn't look so hot when it flash-rusts.

Other items would be assorted exposed bolts/studs, a few brackets, etc etc.

I just need to find a good source for Nickel sulfate in the city. I know it's cheap, and nickle-plating looks awesome...

Just that there isn't enough in a chemistry set to play with

For bolts, just get stainless and anti-seize them to avoid electrolytic corrosion.

Dude... Brushed nickel SO much nicer looking than SS. :salute:

Found a source, and at like $25 for a 5kg bag, too...

Althought I'm wondering if I should plate in copper first, then nickel (like professional chroming). Copper Sulfate is REALLY easy to find. Pesticides are rapidly going the way of Gun Control, so there's a brisk trade in Copper Sulfate for bio-shocking ponds/algae infested pools.

I'd *almost* consider trying to make my own chrome, except that any and all of the chromium salts score pretty high on the "you don't want to fuck with" scale.

Nickel Sulfate is bad enough--it's a pretty ripe carcinogen.

Oops, and I almost forgot a bit of highschool chemistry; I need an acid solution strong enough to dissolve nickel at the same rate as deposition. Fortunately, there's plenty of nickel in our Canadian Nickels (plated--thick-- at 25% by mass, as long as I have any minted before 2002--which I do; a whole sock drawer of 'em...)

Mach10 wrote: 4) I know the anode MUST be iron (replacing FeO(x)- ions with Fe- ions, right?), but I'll be damned if I know what other element the other would need to be so that it doesn't produce anything too toxic or flammable... Zinc maybe?

Um, the other element is the part you're removing rust from... The electrolyte is the only real factor if you're concerned about toxic / flammable vapours.

Mach10 wrote: 5) What's to stop me from adding some salts to the mix and plating said parts with a similar setup for increased corrosion resistance?

Yeah, that's the gist of it.