Vinegar;the best restoration/cleaning product

Hi All,
I have been getting some really good information off this forum so I thought it was time I contributed something useful (which I'm sure many of you will know about, but for those who don't I hope its useful). When rebuilding my commando wheels early on in my project (which is still far from finished) I couldn't find anything to clean the spokes with, wire wheels, steel wool etc wouldn't work really much at all. It looked like calcification so I thought I would try soaking them in vinegar, immediately I could see a reaction when placing the spokes in vinegar and after 24 hours the spokes cleaned up beautifully with a fairly light rough with fine steel wool. I used this on the spoke nipples as well and found out it also removed rust with a bit of help with a wire wheel,ive found rust will move with just the wheel but it is a far more labour intensive process. I soaked the hubs in vinegar too before working on them and it made my job heaps easier. I had heaps of nuts and bolts so I gave them all the vinegar treatment and wire wheeled them. I left some nuts and bolts in the vinegar for maybe a fortnight and when I checked them the container looked very crusty, after emptying I could see it looked like the vinegar had eaten all the iron away and just left carbon, the bolts were etched but a hit with the wire wheel had them come up nice. Attached are a bunch of photos which demonstrate what I'm talking about, some of them don't really illustrate it as well as the results look in the flesh. I think vinegar is the best stuff I have come across, just Neutralise everything straight away with some bicarb soda and water and dry it off then usually spray it with some type of oily stuff. Anyway hope its of some help to someone out there.

Thanks for the info, good results.
I see you cleaned your toes also, was that with vinegar??

along with corrosion and rust you might have removed any plating that was left, leaving bare steel. :shock:

jimbo said:

along with corrosion and rust you might have removed any plating that was left, leaving bare steel. :shock:

Click to expand...

+1
Now what is going to keep the rust from coming right back. Good for cleaning, but some process must be used to preserve the now cleaned parts.
Paint, plating, or ?

I have had decent results using Caswells copy cad, but its a long process

It is why we often go for stainless.

It is, however, quite good at cleaning metal fuel tanks as well.

JimNH said:

It is, however, quite good at cleaning metal fuel tanks as well.

Click to expand...

It works great on tanks. I soaked mine for about two months. It stripped the paint and got rid of the rust and scale in the tank.

Been using vinegar for a very very long time. Mind you it's a very weak acetic acid. Make sure that the parts are thoroughly washed after the corrosion is gone, maybe a mild base to neutralize the acid then lots of water, finally drying the parts out. More often then not, old plating had been removed with the vinegar (zinc), so check before reusing the parts, else they are subject to rust again. Sometimes it's more wise to just buy new nickle and dime hardware, but preferably replace them with stainless and you needn't worry. Don't be penny-wise but pound foolish. Best to do it right the first time than to re-do at a latter time.

JD

Yep I have found that unless the acid is neutralised almost immediately it causes the formation of new surface rust. I keep a bucket of water and sodium bicarbonate and drop the pieces straight into it after cleaning then dry. With the bolts I use an anti corrosive spray afterwards which works ok for a while. for me stainless hardware will come in the years down the track after i recover from spending all of my disposable income on building my bike. I think anywhere which is covered in scale and calcification is probably the best place to use vinegar or any weak acid for that matter.

Whilst your spokes and nipples look gleaming, I wouldn't waste my effort rebuilding the wheel with them unless you re-plate first. The first sign of any road salt and they will be red with rust.

gripper said:

Whilst your spokes and nipples look gleaming, I wouldn't waste my effort rebuilding the wheel with them unless you re-plate first. The first sign of any road salt and they will be red with rust.

Click to expand...

I'm guessing he isn't planning on going anywhere near road salt, and unlike you and me, he may actually get to choose! :wink:

I am thinking of rebuilding an alloy rim on to a wheel for a race bike. It isn't a Norton and I have donor wheels and rims on the shelf. Since this is a first and maybe it won't go as well as I hope, it might be worth a try with cleaned up original hardware before I invest in new spokes and nipples!

If it doesn't work well I just tear down and take the parts to my friendly but not local wheel builder.

Hi.
Here in Italy we have the Balsamic Vinegar too.
But it costs much than standard.
So i will use the normal vinegard.
Sorry, it is a joke.
Piero

P.s.: i always use vinegar to polish al the parts, steel and alu.

Great idea. I've never used vinegar for cleaning hardware. Thanks.

In the '60s when light weight wire wheels and light weight valanced aluminum rims were considered high performance, racers selected the lightest gauge spokes they could and the best spokes were NOT plated, they were painted. Aluminum nipples were common too. The spokes were plated because plating weakens any metal that it is applied to and plating was not a good idea for thin, light spokes.

For decades I have simply touched up my zinc plated spokes with thin spray paint. I shoot a bit into the can's cap and then use a small child's water color paint brush to touch up the spokes. Being thin, it flows beautifully. Works well on other zinc plated hardware too. No salt here in California.

xbacksideslider said:

In the '60s when light weight wire wheels and light weight valanced aluminum rims were considered high performance, racers selected the lightest gauge spokes they could and the best spokes were NOT plated, they were painted. Aluminum nipples were common too. The spokes were plated because plating weakens any metal that it is applied to and plating was not a good idea for thin, light spokes.

Click to expand...

I assume you meant to say "not plated" because plating weakens any metal that it is applied to.... Probably why one should avoid that"flash of hard chrome" on components like crankshafts. :lol:

I have one of these light weight valenced alloy rims with aluminum nipples and near bicycle gauge spokes. It came as a spare rear wheel with a Lockhart caliper and disk as a package with a rolling Seeley Mk2; really submarginal looking to me. I suppose if you monitored it every time you came off the track you might get lucky.

Yes, thanks for the correction, Dances.

Light spokes and super light - and narrow - thin gauge (that's why they were valanced) rims such as Borrani or San Remo were the rims to have, especially when you were on a 15 - 25 horse 250 whatever with not much acceleration, brakes that were even worse, and marginal damping. Some guys favored a WM-1 over a WM-2 because they were lighter. No hanging off, all Mike Hailwood style, center of bike, zero side loading, all cornering speed, no squaring and driving, big arcs, trail braking; hard braking was for losers.

There is a difference between pH and acidity. Acetic acid is a 'weak acid'. Hydrochloric acid is a 'strong acid' Strong acids have very low pH which means the concentration of hydrogen ions is very high. If you pickle hi-tensile steel parts in it you can get hydrogen embrittlement. Acetic acid has a pH of about 4, even when it is 'glacial acetic' - the strong shit. In that form, it will remove organic material, including the skin off your fingers. It won't cause hydrogen embrittlement in hi-strength steel. I've never heard of plating weakening the substrate, except when embrittlement occurs. It can be stopped by baking the plated parts in a 200 deg. C oven for 24 hours, or at 130 deg. C in the case of springs - which can lose temper at 200deg. C