Well I arrived at the workshop this morning to be greeted with this I’ve cleaned it off and you can see where it’s removed some of the corrosion and it’s etched the bare steel well It’s still got some way to go so ive slathered a fresh layer on which will stay on until Tuesday or Wednesday depending on when I can get back down to the workshop
Well there’s still time to come back to bodywork resembling a net curtain I’m sure it’s going to be fine though as nothing is showing bad on the inside
Seems like most of your gel is on the bare steel, very little on the rust? or is gravity defeating you?
Yeah the gel does slide down more than I would like I put the fresh lot on as soon as I got to the workshop Then did a big tidy up stopping every now and then to agitate the gel and push it back up. It does thicken up after a while which helps but gravity is definitely against me.
Once you've slathered it on the rust cover it in cling film. It holds it in place better on vertical panels and doesn't dry out as quick so it keeps working.
I’ve draped a cut up bin liner over it in a bid to stop it drying out too much. I might give the cling film a go if it requires any more after this lot Cheers for the tip zeb
I know you aren’t ‘on site’ all the time, but would less more often lead to it staying where you want? I’ve not used this stuff but considering it as mine is similar to yours (plus holes ). Does it ruin your paint? A strip of butyl tape below the rust then the clingfilm trick. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I’m not so sure how less more often would work I think it needs quite a thick layer over the corrosion to work well. It doesn’t appear to have effected paint where it’s gone on it.
And because its a chemical in a gel, giving the outside of the binliner a good rubbing to move the gel around will help move more active chemical onto the rust, and move the used stuff away. I know on my trial with some "15 minutes" gel on rusty metal for 8 hours, it was still getting better, I found that using a brush to move it around made it work faster.
Back down at the workshop today The gel had dried up quite a bit This is how it looked after cleaning it up It is removing the corrosion but not as quick as I’d like. I went back over it all with a wire wheel on the drill to try and knock it back a bit more It then got another coat which was agitated a few times whilst I was down there then covered in cling film.
I also stripped the side bars back to bare metal They had originally been painted in rattle can stone chip paint But it’s not uv resistant so had cracked and corrosion had started. I then got them painted I bought a front mounted spare wheel carrier of a member on here So I got that prepped and painted as well.
I’ve had all sorts of different attachments and tools in there previous to using the gel. As the corrosion is sat in pits below the surface of the steel now anything abrasive I use will be taking the steel away before the corrosion. The wire wheel was just to take the softened top of the corrosion so the next coat of gel could get further in. In an ideal world this lot would have been cut out and replaced or media blasted to clean it up. This is slow going but I’ll get there in the end.
Have you tried these? Can be good at getting to the pitted rust but not too abrasive on the good metal. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Yup it was using those on it that killed my dremmel. It was less than a year old so I’ve sorted getting Amazon to replace it under warranty When the new one arrives I’ll be giving those a go again on the pitted areas