Reconditioning...
 

I've had a quick search on here for general advice, but haven't turned up anything quickly...

I'm new to car building and rennovation. It looks like i'm going to be grabbing a fair few bits from my donor Sierra, then reusing them after they've been cleaned up.

Is there any general advice around cleaning and repainting the many and varied bits and pieces I am going to salvage?

I am particularly thinking of painting the engine block and gearbox casing, hubs / uprights and brake callipers. Is it just a case of wire brush to get the loose rust off and then slap on some Hammerite, or is there more to it than that..?

Here is a good link for brake reconditioning if you dont want to do it yourself :D

http://biggred.co.uk/index.php

i recon'd my m/c and calipers with parts from bigred where quick and helpful

I also used Big red for calliper seals cracking service

Arfon

I have just tried using electrolysis for the first time and the results were excellent and it is surprisingly easy.
Best of all you will probably already have all the items needed.
For my first try I just did a brake carrier that was very rusty, after a few hours was taken out an the lumps of rust just flake off.

I soaked my rear hubs in a product called DEOX-C for 2 weeks(was away at work) and was very impressed with the results.

Electrolisis is awesome and the longer you can leave it the better the results.
I did my hubs, callipers and carriers, then gave them a quick blast in the grit blaster and then a few coats of paint they came out great

Arfon

Whatever you clean and however you clean it, it wants to be bagged up in an old polythene bag straight away. Then when your ready to put a batch together for painting it will be as good as the day you cleaned it. Stops everything going rusty and saves a bunch of time painting everything as you go. Same thing applies to mechanical items clean and bag the lot, clingfilm is another good preserver , makes life easier. An easy way to clean up all the old nuts and bolts is to put them all in a big old coffee tin, chuck some thinners or gunk in there put the lid on and just shake it for a few minutes. Works wonders and no mess.


Edit. Reson four edet waz the spelin wasz relly bad an I ad two zort it.
bob

+1 for electrolysis from me, too. I did wirebrush parts I could not dip into the electrolyte: gearbox, bellhousing, engine block, halfshafts. I electrolised callipers, disks, drums, hubs, bearing carriers, drum backplates. On convoluted surfaces with nooks and crannies, and especially the pitting from rust, you cannot get all the rust out with a wirebrush.

The main downsides to electrolysis are: 1) you have to strip everything to bits (whereas you can grit blast complete front hubs , or, perhaps, callipers, without taking them apart), 2) as soon as you take the part from electrolyte, wash and wipe it, surface rust starts to appear, largely due to metallic iron dust reduced from rust by electrolysis. Literally, you take out a part from the bath, it's black. You wash it, wipe it off, its gray. Next day it's chocolate brown. So, with electrolysis you have to paint ASAP or oil the surface if you plan to paint later.

New question
 

Hi,
I just go on on this topic rather than opening a new one.
My battery charger(s) have an overload protection, and also a "low charge" detector, which makes the charger not working if the charge in the battery to be charged is too low (lower than 3v). The electrolytic solution has no charge (I guess), so my electrolyse doesn't work because of that. It is very hard to find chargers without these electronic protections nowadays, and I wan to avoid to spend more money for that anyway.
So I was thinking about using a car battery for the electrolyse. What would be the risks? And in order to avoid the battery to discharge along the process, can I leave the charger plugged to the battery during the electrolyse? Any risk for that?
Thanks in advance to the experts ;)