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I have a 5 gallon bucket of Apple cider vinegar in the garage, and its literally full to the rim with nuts, bolts washers, hubs, wheel carriers, and spring plates...
Pardon the silly question, but what is the purpose of apple cider vinegar? Natural degreaser and rust remover?
Pardon the silly question, but what is the purpose of apple cider vinegar? Natural degreaser and rust remover?
It removes the rust. There are faster ways for sure, but, there are no chemicals, it's not terrible for the environment, it's easy on the parts, and in the case of our old lines, for example, that are not coming off the car, the rust can safely be removed with the fittings on the car...
You want to degrease prior to putting parts in the vinegar. Takes way too long if you don't do a good degreasing prior.
can't wait to see the bucket o' bolts returned ... the wrapping in rags is clever too
Is this rust the result of regular winter driving or salted roads on top of that?
Didnt own a winter car in Montreal and now live far below the snow line .. like 7000 miles
The car lived in Maine and Canada...so yeah lots of salt rain and snow...
But that said, it's remarkably rust free for a car of this age having lived in those conditions. Nothing on the body underneath or above with the exception of the usual places around the window seals...the rear has been taken care of. Front will likely get done next year.
The cider vinegar being applied on the car is time consuming, but all you really do is spray once or twice a day and every so often check progress. So as a "while we wait" thing, it's fine and keeps me from having to open a can of worms...
Question now is how to re-seal from the elements. Waxoyl? Paint? Any ideas?
Question now is how to re-seal from the elements. Waxoyl? Paint? Any ideas?
Yup, I use Dinitrol which is what the factory used, looks v similar to the Tectyl posted above. I bought a can of the clear rather than the excrement-brown. The cans have a schutz fitting for use with spray guns but I just use a paintbrush and apply by hand, then seal afterwards. Have used it on driveshaft CV joints and a cleaned transmission casing, good stuff.
Well on the previous car, the front control arm bushings were most shot by far. They had mostly separated from the metal sleeves...
On this car we haven't touched the front bushings yet, but one of his spring plate bushings I could have pressed out with my fingers, although the monoballs inside are not shot at all. Just the rubber surround on one of them. The other wasn't so bad.
Trailing arm bushings on these cars are pretty robust, so likelihood of really "needing" new ones is low.
So long and short is this...imho, if I were doing this on a budget and wanted best bang for the buck, I'd do the fronts. And then if I had more money and could do spring plates, I'd do those second (unless they are clearly dead). Spring plates typically lose the rubber boots first, and then if you don't have the tranny tray on, you get a ton of grit in there and eventually you start getting play in the monoball. The nice thing about the elephant replacements is they are stiffer than stock, weather sealed and they will last longer than some of the other alternatives. You don't completely eliminate the weissach effect, but you do reduce it a lot. I like that for street driving and some sport driving. If it were a track car I'd be going with maybe tarett or something more like that to eliminate the weissach effect all together. But those don't last long on the street, and I have enough maintenance ahead that I don't need the suspension to have issues in the coming years. I'm trying to use components, for the most part, that are weather sealed and "set and forget"...
Track cars get rebuilt over the winter, street cars get driven all the time. So with all these cars, each of the five guys should be good for years (hopefully) after this is done. Leaves time an room for lots of other stuff to be done next year...
Btw. We are replacing his trailing arm bushings, with elephant, but not because they are shot. He wants to tackle it as a while your in there, and the marginal performance gain is appealing...so we do it anyway this time.
When do you know you own a Porsche? When you pay $560 for two bushings LOL! Wow, couldn't believe the price on those when I went to check them out on their site.
... Will be doing my wheels bearings next / just need to find a hill to free wheel down before and after to be able to judge the impact scientifically
But will likely do some WIIThere on the front as you say ... I guess it's quite hard to judge the deflection a car at 100 kph under braking while turning inflicts on the bushings when you just looking or pushing on various bits under the stationary car
Why don't you use diluted molasses? I tested it on a rusty (I live in Florida) 100 year old piston I found (next to a barn find model T ford) and had it sit in this molasses bath for 3 weeks. It came out all clean!
11-30-2015, 10:54 PM
