HOW TO: Remove Rust From Chrome

The Tools


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Vinegar for surface rust. - Contains acid that makes short work of light rust. It can eat the metal and any coatings as well if left for extended periods of time. I suggest 1-2 hours max, but it's up to you. Lots of people have left their rusty tools and stuff in vinegar baths overnight with no ill effects. This is a nice step 1 because it also handles thoroughly cleaning the part(s).


Wire brushes, steel wool, wire wheel drill bits. AKA: Stuff for scrubbing. - Rust is tough. There's no easy way out of any of the deeper and more severe rust without scrubbing. You can accomplish everything in this guide with just a wire brush and steel wool pads, but the drill bits and wire wheels save serious time and elbow grease. Work smarter, not harder! :biglaugh:

Water - Vinegar bath = acid bath. You want to thoroughly rinse all that acid off your metal once you're happy with the results. If you don't get it off it will continue going to work on the rust and metal. Until you are anything but happy with the results.

WD-40 or Oven - We can't leave all that water on there... it will create more rust. Fun fact, WD in WD-40 stands for Water Displacement. For the 1001 purposes we use this stuff for, it's intended purpose was always quickly and thoroughly removing water from electrical components. Works great getting water off and out of metal just as well.

Cotton towels - Wipe off the WD-40/water, etc. Apply polish, remove polish. No cleaning job is complete without towels.

Polish - Rust is all gone, time to make things shiny.

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The Job

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Step 1: Surface rust. Easily solved with a vinegar bath and sitting on my *** for about 2 hours.



Result: Pretty good. The really deep rust and a lot of the stuff around the welds is still very much there though.


I'll take care of that with some steel wool pads and a grinding wheel on my cordless drill in a bit. First thing though is to wash all the acid off the metal so it doesn't continue going to work long after it's bath.

Step 2: Rinse off and thoroughly dry. WD-40 is great for this, but I opted for an oven set to 200 degrees.


Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown and delicious.

Step 3: Scrub at all that deeper rust with steel wool pads, metal brushes, and grinding wheel attached to low rpm cordless drill.


Not bad. Still have a lot of stuff in the narrow crevices that I'm having a hard time getting at, and a lot of really tiny little specs of rust/pits/etc.

Step 4: Tiny and fast rpm wire brush attached to a dremel


Result:


Ehhhh I could mess with it a little more, but I think that's about as good as they're going to get. There's only so much you can do when there's pitting like that.

Step 5: Polish to shine






That spacer looks a little rough yet, but what the hell I'll toss it in there until I can come up with a new one. Found a metric bolt that will work to replace the rusty crap this shipped with. The rest of the bolts can be re-used from what's on the bike already.

Step 6: Install



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All images in this guide are hosted externally and are high resolution. Click any of them for a bigger view of the pic and see the little details of the progress. Since it's externally hosted I'm not sure how long they'll be around, so all images are also attached below. They're smaller less detailed images though to comply with forum attachment rules.

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well done. mine are gettin etched up, too. think i'll try this this weekend

Regards from my Taptalking Hercules Android

Mythbusters did a test on chrome cleaner. (Season 1, episode 5)
On that show, they found that the best way to clean rust etc off chrome was with aluminium foil and coke. I think it works!

Destrcutions :

Get some alfoil, scrunch it up loosely, unscrunch it so you have a bit of a bowl, pour a bit of regular coke in, scrunch it into a ball.
There you have your chrome cleaner!
Rub it on the chrome.
Wash the coke off afterwards! :biglaugh:


Or, you could try soaking the parts in coke instead of vinegar!

ps. Don't drink coke! :rofl_200:

Coke works for sure, probably more acid than the vinegar...

Thanks for the great info...I will have to try this.

Nice write-up with good pics. Thanks Zack!

You xan also try applying rust converter aka phosphoric acid with a brush. I experienced good results too. It works like vinegar but better imo.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

Thanks all!

dtoebaert-5311 said:

Coke works for sure, probably more acid than the vinegar...

Click to expand...

This may be true, but cleanup of sticky coke doesn't sound like much fun. Especially in a part like these engine gaurds where there's all kinds of hollow unreachable stuff.

I don't want to come up to my bike in the spring and find ants crawling out of my engine gaurds :rofl_200:

The foil could be added to this process with vinegar as well. The aluminum helps the chemical reaction/scrubbing along with just about any metal cleaning solution. Tip: foil + vinegar and water softener will work to polish your old silverware and junk too. Simply by submerging it.

A bit off topic but related. Instead of cleaning or if cleaning just isn't working out due to pitting, etc. Has anyone tried the binary spray on chrome stuff? I am sure many you have seen different videos and it looks impressive, just wondering if you all had tried that route before. I was thinking it would be an easy way to chrome the scoops and rear panels. Just spit balling in an attempt to make more affordable mod monkey solutions

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

I haven't and it sounds like a good idea for pitting etc, but I wouldn't use a covering product over a bunch of existing rust. I would still clean it to prevent it from rusting underneath the cover.

Once that stuff starts, it never actually stops... even after a cleaning job such as this - keeping it polished to prevent a rust return is important. A covering product such as that would go a long way to sealing/preventing future rust though.

I have had a lot of luck removing rust from chrome using never dull and fine steel wool. Go back and forth from one to the other, it works great!

Lauren

1995 VMax
1983 900 Secas
1967 YL1

Alohae said:

I have had a lot of luck removing rust from chrome using never dull and fine steel wool. Go back and forth from one to the other, it works great!

Lauren

1995 VMax
1983 900 Secas
1967 YL1

Click to expand...

I have used Never Dull for years and i can has actually lasted 20 years.
I've seen coke and aluminum foil also work well.

Removing rust in small pitting can try the most patient of us. I've had good luck w/using a Harbor Freight Tools sandblaster w/a hopper feed as a soda blaster, and bicarbonate of soda purchased at Costco in 13 lb bags. The soda media is small, and it scours crevices that normal methods like the Dremel or cordless drill attachments only partially remove. This HFT hopper gun often goes on-sale for about $10, you don't need a special baking soda setup like HFT sells, unless you want to treat large pieces, and don't want to continually reload the hopper gun. If so, then the soda tank HFT sells may be better for you.

I was very surprised at the great results from using this cheapie tool and the bicarbonate of soda, it cut the rust very well in the smallest nooks and crannies, and the use of 'elbow grease' was greatly reduced. USe the traditional wire wheels, flapper wheels, grinder discs, whatever to remove the loose scale, and then try the bicarbonate of soda, and I think you'll be happy.

http://www.harborfreight.com/21-oz-hopper-gravity-feed-spot-blaster-gun-95793.html



Here's a thread on the baking soda method: http://www.vmaxforum.net/showthread.php?t=26740&highlight=bicarbonate+soda

The bigger HFT soda tank: http://www.harborfreight.com/40-lb-portable-soda-blaster-60801.html



I bought this Kerker 4/1 used, it was very rusty. I did the bicarb. of soda to it, and it turned-out great, compared to what it was. I was especially pleased to see how it got into the crevices w/very little work, and how it scoured them clean. I sold it to another forum member.