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December
28, 2002 Degreasing the front suspensionI thought that I should clean up the parts I've already removed before taking anything else off the car. I've decided to restore the parts as I remove them before moving on to the next project. This way nothing gets lost and when reassembly time comes, I have boxes of new parts ready to go, rather than projects waiting for me that I may have forgotten. After asking around a little bit about degreasers, I found that a lot of people use oven cleaner to degrease parts. OK, I'll give that a try. I loaded up all the suspension parts I removed yesterday into the back of the Protege5 and went to the store. I bought some acid-proof gloves, a few scrub brushes and five cans of oven cleaner. Then I drove to a local spray-it-yourself car wash with high pressure hoses, and proceeded to cover every part with the oven cleaner. I let it soak for about fifteen minutes, but a line started to form and several people asked if I was almost done, so I hurried the process a little bit and sprayed the parts off. The parts I did first (which soaked longest) came out fair. The rest are still pretty well caked with grease and grime. Looks like I'll have to spend some quality time with the scraper and wire wheel. I think the oven cleaner would have worked better on thinner crud and if it were warmer (it was under 30 degrees today) and if I'd had more time to let it soak. I'm looking into a product called GreaseMaster from Rusteco. It's supposed to be environmentally friendly and the most potent degreaser ever. It's also scary expensive. But there's a lot of degreasing to do on this car, so it might be worth the investment if it works as advertised. I'll keep you posted. So my first experience in degreasing this thing wasn't a great one, and that's why I don't have any photos--there's nothing to see. I'll probably start scraping tomorrow. I'd like to be able to blast and powdercoat these parts next week so I can try out my new powdercoating system. Previous
Restoration Day E-mail me at toolman8@sbcglobal.net This page accessed Thanks, Fidget! |