I soaked the fuse panel in vinegar for about an hour and wiped clean. Took off all the corrosion. The lug bolts were very rusty and soaked for a week. Hosed them off with no scrubbing required. They will never look new but certainly better than before. My wife hates the smell of solvents but couldn't care less about the smell of vinegar in the garage.

There are three common grades of vinegar; table, pickling, and cleaning in order of increasing strength. Acetic acid is not very strong, so it takes a while to do the job. Also very good as a vegetation killer; but you pay many times the price if you purchase it as a weed killer.

I wanted to test vinegar once as a cleaner. Threw some rusty bolt in a cup of vinegar and, well, forgot they were there . Found them several months later and all that was in the cup was about one inch of solid Iron Oxide.

Oxcalic acid is pretty cool for removing rusty crap too. Sold as wood bleach at the hardware store..

I use "Evapo-Rust. Not too hard to find, I bought my last batch at HF. It treats the metal so surface rust is less likely to return. I have a 356 ring and pinion I treated several years ago, and it still looks fine.

The Cap'n

+1 on evapo-rust



I used the vinegar method on an old roto-tiller fuel tank and was amazed at how good a job it did. left it for a couple days with a few nuts inside and shook it around periodically. .. Very clean inside and no damage.

Evapo-Rust works through a process called chelation where Vinegar being an acid sort of eats stuff away.

A friend who is restoring a Z car is using Molasses and H2O, 9 to 1, with great results. It takes a couple of weeks but only works on the rust , not paint or rubber.

I've had good success with citric acid. You can buy it powdered and mix it to whatever strength you want (saves on shipping and storage space). I think I got a 5 Lb bag on Amazon for less than $20. It smells like concentrated citrus and is sour as hell but it cleans really well and isn't strong enough to damage any metals I've used it on.

I've used 8 wt% to passivate some stainless parts and they made it through 4 weeks of salt spray testing with minimal corrosion only on welded areas, machined areas were fine.

You can also use Baking Soda and Hydrogen Peroxide as a Paste

. Then brush your teeth when you are finished!

Ya.......I"m with this!

For parts small enough to soak, this stuff is magic. Try it and you will never mess around with home recipes again.

As someone alluded to, it doesn't attack steel at all so you don't have to worry about leaving the parts in too long and dissolving them.

Also, no smell...