Do you remember as a kid, putting an old penny in vinegar and seeing how over a bit of time it became shinny?
Well, I removed my fuse panel and used white vinegar and a scrungy pad cut to size, to clean things up.
I'm happy to report that it did a great job, and with out a pencil eraser. I cleaned the pins on the relays as well.
However, I must add that after using the vinegar, I sprayed evreything rather liberally with dielectric srpay.
Anyone out there have a spare fuse panel? What I would like to know is, are you willing to try and emerse the entire panel in vinegar for a few hours, minus the relays, hang it up to spray with dielectric spray and see what the results are?
See if we can turn a time consuming job into something a bit more passive.
Thanks,
Mike......

 

I hope that vinegar smell does not hang around and permeate all the leather bits in the car thus making it smell like pickles ALL THE TIME!

Good work on the clean up job. That is a job that EVERY older 928 should have done to it!

 

I thought spinning the fuses once a month was a mandatory bonding procedure for our 928's. Actually, it sounds like a good idea as I doubt that 5% acetic acid will harm anything. I have a spare I can soak this weekend. Any idea on how long it should bathe?

Dennis

 

Isn't that every 928?

I agree, this winter my fuse panel is coming out for a full cleaning.

 

I forget... What kind of acid is white vinegar? And remind me what steps you are taking to neutralize it before reinstallation?

Inquiring minds want to know...

 

Hi Dennis, not sure as to how long to soak it. Try an hour then inspect it and wipe a few pins and see what you have. I would also use a plastic pan for soaking. After marking you relays you can stand those up in a pan and add vinegar about 7/8's of the way up the pins, not sure you want to get vinegar in the relays. As soon as you take each relay out of the soak, wipe and spray with dielectric spray. Then hang the panel up on a tree limb using one of the mounting holes and spray it starting from the highest corner. One gallon of Distilled White Vinegar, and one can of dielectric spray should do it.
Let me know how it turns out.
Mike.........

 

Bob,

White vinegar is 5% acetic acid. A very dilute mixture of baking soda and water will neutralize it.

Dennis

 

What did you use to neutralize the acid?

When do you expect this acid to stop eating away at the contacts?

Before I retired from a major airline, some idiot tried to clean the interior of a 767 pylon with Easy-Off oven cleaner. The pylon is the attachment for the engine to the wing for you non-aviation folks. Hell, why work hard when you can work easy! Well every time that aircraft came in for major overhaul (every 18 months) the pylon was corroded even worse. Every time, including the first time we flooded the pylon with water and a neutralizer until the PH was neutral. Damn if the corrosion wasn't worse on the next visit. Finally ended up parking that aircraft in the desert because the cost of repairs exceeded the value of the aircraft and the airline wouldn't take a chance on loosing a engine and pylon in flight.

I know Easy Off is a lot more caustic than white vingar but that eraser sounds like a better deal to me.

 

MMmmmmm Pickles.

 

Always glad to hear of good maintenance on aircraft! Glad they parked it. Just one note, though: a lot of aluminum alloys have a clad surface to prevent corrosion. Works fine until you penetrate/destroy it, then the alloy's normal reactivity takes over. One nice thing (well, I don't know if nice is the right word) about using dilute acetic acid on these (non-aluminum) contacts, is that if you can't smell it, it's probably gone. The human nose can detect pretty low concentrations of stuff like this. And if you use a dilute sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) solution, you can also rinse the treated areas with this it until you don't see any more bubbles.

 

Ok, got home today and went for a spin in the shark, no vinegar smell. I used the dielectric spray, (lots of it) to dilute and wash away any residual vinegar. I would think that at such low concentration (5%) any left over vinegar would become saturated or used up and no longer react especially after being sprayed.
I'll wait to hear from Dennis and see what sort of results he gets.
Thanks to all who answered and gave their $0.02 worth. A very interesting discussion indeed.
Mike........

 

A vinegar dip doesn't sound like a really bad idea. Acetic acid is a liquid diluted at about 5% in water to make vinegar. There is no solid form of acetic acid at normal working temperatures. Once it evaporates either naturally or by heating, it is gone. There is no residual acidic component. If you need to quickly neutralize the acidic action, baking soda will do so but leave a sodium acetate residue which should be washed away almost as you would sodium chloride.
If the only materials exposed to acetic acid are brass and plastic I don't see and harm coming although the oxidized surface of the brass will eventually return.
Good luck

 

FWIW, a dielectric is an insulator, not a conductor of current. That said, it is certainly better to have clean, corrosion free, connections coated with some protective dielectric material rather than corrosion as long as the coating does not interfere with the electrical connection.

I don't know if there is a potential future problem here. Presumably the connectors, fuses, etc., displace the dielectric and all is well. Certainly many here have posted good results, but I am not happy with using anything labeled "dielectric" in this application.

Maybe I just don't like the idea of cleaning an electrical connection to get good conductivity and then slathering it with an acknowledged insulator, or maybe it is just pedantry?

I have used a couple of versions of a product called Deoxit (by Caig Labs, available at Fry's, ) with good success to bring switches back to life and clean connectors. It claims to be a cleaner and corrosion protector and seems to work well, but for all I know, it is some kind of dielectric spray with vinegar in it......

 

Stabilant would be my first choice - if it weren't $100 for a small bottle...

http://www.stabilant.com/

 

i have some advice not sure if anyone has noticed that its usually only the cheap aluminum fuses that cause the biggest problem so i just headed down to my local aftermarket VW shop and bought the real brass fuses cleaned the fuse pads added a little bit of superlube grease to stop anymore corrosion then changed all the fuses to the original brass ones i have not had any fuse gremlins since i made the changes and that was more than 6 yrs ago i figured fix the problem at the source not the symptoms