After 1 winter with my truck being NHOU treated, my fenders, rear bumper, tailgate.and running boards are all coated with the stuff around the edges. Is this normal and how do you get it off?
Mechanics here don't get the credit they deserve for dealing with rust. I been half arsed shopping for a 1 ton dumper for a year or so. A stipulation is that a plow has never been mounted. They are few and far between (especially in my price range). I can deal with owning a beater dump, but I cannot deal with trying to keep it going when every repair turns into a makeshift machining operation.
I like fluid film here in Michigan. Here’s an old Michigan farmer tip that I didn’t see mentioned though. Before you spray anything that has surface rust present with any type of rust prevention. Whether that be fluid film, paint, etc. treat with Ospho. Phosphoric acid converts iron oxide into inert iron phosphate. My grandpa, who could stretch a buck until you could see through it, first learned to use it in the navy in WW II. Most of his equipment had patches on top of patches before it was so used up it couldn’t be repaired anymore. Ospho kept it all from turning to rust. I believe the process is very similar to parkerizing.
I tried that before...I was disappointed with the results, but maybe I fouled something up with the process?
The bottle of ospho I have here is probably 20 years old and says it’s 50% phosphoric acid. My understanding is that concentrations greater than that aren’t more helpful per se. It’s possible what you used was a lower concentration. Idk… I do know you dang sure don’t want the stuff I have to get on your skin! Gives you a pretty good tickle. You have to knock off any loose rust, make sure the surface is as dry and clean as possible, and reapply if there’s visible rust left behind. You want to take the surface down to light surface rust that is well adhered. I believe I used acetone to prep surfaces in the past. The acid should be able to do the rest. I’ve used it on some vehicle frames, and restored a crusty Kubota plow to like new. I thought I had before pictures of the plow but I guess not. 15 years ago is a long time. I’ve seen it fill in minor pitting and make rough surfaces smooth after the sand size surface rust has been cleaned off. If you’ve got big flakes of rust though that rot’s usually too far gone. The stuff isn’t miracle juice. I view it as another tool in the prevention tool box. And thus my knowledge of the subject is exhausted.
Every spring I get under my 4runner and hit the frame rust with rust convertor, and then I have started following up with blasting everything indiscriminately with WD40. I'm sure this is a inferior process to the proper products, but it only costs me $20 a year. This was one of the models that should have gotten the toyota frame recall but never did. Looks almost brand new, other than a couple key problem areas like the radiator cross-brace. Car has 240k on it. I joke that I'm stuck with it because it's in absolutely phenominal mechanical condition.