Last night I took another look at the tinned test area on the snake's
gas tank. It still looked pretty bad in spite of the fact I had earlier
tried to clean off the excess flux and residual crud, first with MEK and
then with trichlorethene. Neither had worked very well. About all
either of these solvents had accomplish was to turn the gummy deposit
into a slightly softer gum that tended to spread more evenly rather than
to come off. With heavier applications and more rubbing, I had managed
to get most of this goop off but the area still didn't look much better.
There were lots of spots I thought were rust so last night I decided to
try cleaning them up with Eliminate, which is an organic de-ruster.
These spots turned out to be mostly carbonized goop but, to my surprise,
Eliminate seemed to work much better as a cleaner than the strong
solvents had. One advantage of this stuff is that there are no noxious
smelling fumes to contend with. Obviously some kind of chemical
reaction takes place when this stuff is spread on because a slight
sulphury smell results. Another nice features is that exposed metal
comes out bright and shiny clean looking. Like phosphoric acid, this
stuff seems to leave deposit on the surface of bare steel which tends to
resist further rusting for a time. Maybe TIDE would have worked just as
well but I was so encouraged by this result (well, the passage of time
has helped too), I'm reconsidering trying to tin the outside of the
tank. I still have plenty of hidden surfaces to practice on.
While I'm on the subject of chemical de-rusters, yesterday I asked if
using a rust converter (sorry about the garbled subject line) inside the
tank was a good idea prior to coating with a sealer. I got one response
recommending against this so I've decided to drop that idea. What about
using phosphoric acid or one of the bio-degradable organic de-rusters on
the market instead?
Roland Dudley
cobra@hpcdcsn.cdc.hp.com
CSX2282
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