I guess that was a bad idea.

Dr.Jass

Dr.Jass

Pastor of Muppets
Stored my 8¾" 3.36:1 gears in some anti-corrosion/rust-remover goo for a couple of years. They're NOS and I didn't want them to get any worse, so it seemed like a good plan to preserve them... until the water evaporated. Now I can't get the stuff off!

I'm pretty-sure that ZeroRust is molasses-based at this point. I've got the pinion clean, but the globs of solid stuck between the teeth of the ring gear are impossible to remove without metal tools, and I'll be damned if I'm going to screw up the factory gear lap doing that. This may be the rarest set of NOS gears left for the trusty 8¾", and I don't want to harm them.

I can't believe how pervasive that stuff is once dried, and the ring gear's been soaking in water for well over a week. :doh:
 
I don't think I've got anything that will survive lacquer thinner in which I could soak it! Thinner plays hell with plastic, as I'm sure you're well aware.
 
Buy and aluminum pan...or a big old soup pot. Then douse it in laquer thinner and sit back and wait. But if it's an organic based preservative then I'd think water would "eventually" loosen it up. What about putting then in a boiling pot of water...the heat and agitation of the water might help move things along.
 
hell a cheep tinfoil turkey pan...or even a big pot from goodwill....i dig the idea of boiling it off but i worry about it rusting due to water boiling...and fall back on the laqure
 
If you do get a quick "flash rust" it should be no problem to quickly clean up with a oil soaked rag.
 
That disposable pan idea is a good one. If nothing else, I have a pan you can use. Let me know and I'll see about running it up to you. It's not like I'll be doing much for awile now anyway.
 
Yeah, Stretch. My luck, it's one of Sidekick's "seasoned" pans and I have her outside my house throwing hatchets.
 
I need the zero-dollar solution, and none of my pots and pans are big enough to soak this thing in lacquer thinner. Even if they were, I do still have to eat out of them later. It's been soaking since I posted this, with the water changed often. It's basically like trying to watch erosion. :doh:
 
Well I found an old frying pan in the basement, and it's just big enough so the ring gear is soaking in lacquer thinner as we speak. I pulled it out of the tub of water and placed it in the pan teeth down, only to find that the bolt holes are packed with hardened ZeroRust as well.
[smilie=l:

So, assuming this works on the toothed side, I'll have to flip it over and hope like heck it works on the bolt holes too. Yes, I have some poured into the bolt holes now, but the pan's not deep enough to completely submerge the gear. :doh:
 
If the bolt holes wern't packed solid too I would think there was somthing wrong with the world! Thats just nice! :D
 
Well, I got most of the goo off using the lacquer thinner and a jeweler's screwdriver, but there's still some stuck to it. Of course, I forgot to put a cover over it, so it was mostly evaporated. :doh: I filled it back up with thinner and put a 5-gallon can on top of it. I got most of it out of the bolt holes as well, so hopefully this round will get the ring gear completely clean. Looking back on it now, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have used wax & grease remover (the body-shop kind), as that's what's in the full 5-gallon can. It might work better on this stuff. I'll check on it later and if it's not doing so hot, I'll swap out for that... I'll have to, in fact, because I'm now essentially out of lacquer thinner.
 
It's pretty bad when the company that markets the stuff can't even tell you how to get it off. I told the guy what happened, and he sounded like Butthead: "Uhhh..."

The stuff right at the surface is incredibly stuck... waiting for a call from the chemist that developed the stuff. :doh:
 
So, the suggestion from someone who works for the chemist is boiling water... for a couple of hours. Oy vey. :doh: I don't have a pot that big, and I'm not going to hover over a frying pan that long to keep the gears covered in water.
 
No, no you don't. I had a large stock pot, but it was from Wal-Mart which explains why the bottom of it was shot after two years. Scrap metal.
 
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