The Ford Barn - Hood Panels

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- - Hood Panels (https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=168996)

Working on a little sheet metal . A before and after 6 hours in the electrolysis tank . Then I brush on some metal ready rinse and back in the barn the panels will stay nice and bright until I get back to them .

Looks good for only 6 hours. I had to leave my very rusty Cub Cadet wheels in for 2 days.

Its a slow process but when there's a threat of rain I don't need to worry about my sandblasting equipment getting wet . Just hang the part in the tank and check and rinse every few hours .

Dennis,
I tried electrolysis on a few items a couple years ago, including two CCPU doors. I left the doors in the 100 gallon stock tank for about 7 days. The results were disappointing. I cleaned the anodes once or twice in the 7 days they were each in the tank. Do you clean the anodes and if you do, how? I dipped my anodes, old lawn mower blades, in muratic acid for 10 minutes or so which cleaned the red rust off quite well. I then rinsed the blades off with water and put them back in the tank. The first time I cleaned the blades I used a wire brush and a wire wheel on my bench grinder. I had rust dust everywhere - a huge mess. I must be doing something wrong as many people swear about how well electrolysis works. My doors and other parts didn't turn out anywhere close to how your hood panel did, even though I left them in the tank much longer. I would like to derust an engine block that has stuck valves, guides and cam in it. I am hesitant to put it in the tank and do electrolysis on it. My other option is using molasses. I have done it once before on a rust welded CCPU back panel where the clamping strip was rust frozen to the panel flange. I tried EvapoRust and PB Blaster with no luck. The rust was a very hard black substance that actually kind of welded the two metal pieces together. The molasses worked very well, but it took about 3 weeks to turn the rust into a sort of paste that could be scraped off.
Rusty Nelson

Rusty I have not cleaned the anodes in months . But I clean the part every couple of hours . I just hose the part off if I see loose material a little wire brushing sometimes I use a little liquid detergent and back in the tank . On the hood panels the paint was floating to the top the first hour . I add super washing soda once in awhile mixed in warm water .

Here's a hood panel when I first placed in the tank I toped off the water level to cover those are the same anodes I've been using for a long time some scrap from a mobile home frame .

Dennis,
What do you use as anodes? Like I mention before, I use old lawn mower blades. It seems like the bubbling slows down when the anodes get a lot of rust looking crud on them. I did clean the doors about half way though the week of derusting. Maybe I should clean the items more often like you do.
Rusty Nelson

Dennis, what do you use as a power supply? Some battery chargers pulse, I am not sure if that is what is best.... just trying to get my system up and going.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ctlikon0712 (Post 1088517)

Dennis, what do you use as a power supply? Some battery chargers pulse, I am not sure if that is what is best.... just trying to get my system up and going.

I use a battery charger set on 12 volts .

Try more anode area. I try and keep my anode to cathode area ratio at as close to 1:1 as possible. Also, with that size surface area, I would suspect that a 12v battery charger would not be enough. I use a 12V 60Amp adjustable power supply for my electrolysis stripping tank, and use sheet metal for the anode to keep the surface area ratio up.