Alloy cleaning "the easy way"

[asteroid500]

OK...it's asked a 100 times a year..."how do i get my alumimium frame to clean up"...
Well i work for a company that speacialises in alloy truck bodys, trays.
Ever woundered how they get it to look so good without having it highly polished?

Ive done this exercise on the second hand Procuirct 304 that my mate Roostmaster gave me because my "BRAND NEW" DEP wouldnt fit & looked like a gun on a battle ship.

OK 1 silencer after mods made to the mounts.....the welding process managed to curl up the sticker/decal, but amazingly the adhesive stayed put...at this stage it had been wire brushed & every other thing i could try to clean it had failed.....red Aussie dirt is a bugger to remove.
the glue was removed with some thiners & scotch brite pad.(this took longer then polishing it)


OK... the next step was to drop it into a acid sollution thats mild enough to work with without gloves...its like alloy mag whell cleaner...you dont have to do this but it makes it alot easier to polish when the time comes. It fizzes up as you can see, rinse thoroughly.


the bonous was it cleaned the inside...i hadnt given it much thought but it was a gift from this process.


As you can see 1 very clean but dull/satin finished alloy silencer, another suprise is it removed the rust on the rivets & the stainless steel tip came up like new.


Now the polishing bit....all you need is some OOO steel wool & comercial hand cleaner/soap, this hand cleaner "MUST NOT BE OF THE GRIT KIND", you know the sandy stuff, only use the soap type....now simply scup in a continal direction not in a swirling or circular motion as this will leave swirl marcks on your parts & you will be very suprised when you've rinsed it of with the hose.

Compare the stainless steel tip with the stainless steel inlet on the reasembled silencer... a bit of a differance hey.

[AlisoBob]

Steel wool + aluminum + water = Electrolysis

[asteroid500]

Bob,
as you know i live in 1 of the most humid and damp tropical places in the world it rains for 4months & i mean rain...Darwin....we've never had a customer bring back a body for any such alement.....try it on somthing small & leave it outside for a couple of months.
The soap has somthing to do with that i'm sure.

[AlisoBob]

This is what you should use on aluminum.

http://66.132.189.86/brswool.html

Polish it once..... DONE.

The shine will last WAY longer than if you used steel wool

[asteroid500]

bloody computer..cant find the page...

[AlisoBob]

Its a link to "Bronze Wool"

Any micro fibers left inbedded in the aluminum are inert, unlike steel wool

[asteroid500]

well folks give that a try over the steel wool & i'll give you a season by season report on the steel wool...
ive been cleaning my 97-250 rims with steel wool for 13yrs & there fine...food for thought.

[Tharrell]

I used undiluted wheel acid to clean the baked on crud off my engine.
The caveat is, you need a water hose ready to go in your other hand.
Now, my buddy pressure washes big rigs and uses diluted acid like your talking about.
It works wonders both ways.
Oh yeah, he washes the bikes like that also.
It screws up powdercoated parts though, don't really know why.

[gregrobo]

well folks give that a try over the steel wool & i'll give you a season by season report on the steel wool...
ive been cleaning my 97-250 rims with steel wool for 13yrs & there fine...food for thought.

i use the finest 3m scotch brite and diluted truck wash aluminium cleaner takes of the coloured anodising

[asteroid500]

i use the finest 3m scotch brite and diluted truck wash aluminium cleaner takes of the coloured anodising

ANY anodised colors would be siriously fucked if you were to scrub it whit steel wool let alone acid...this is a tried & true formula for aluminium....i see it every day on 1 tonners brand new for show rooms.....they never oxidise.

[gregrobo]

yeah i dont use the scotch on powder coated or anodised parts and i only use alumclean on stripped parts i like my bling bits coloured

[yota]

this stuff is awesome and easy, advance auto parts. buffed my spars by hand and they have stayed shiny for a long time.

http://www.bluemagicusa.com/



(:

[asteroid500]

Nice bike yota......mate a tiny orb spider....
next fat hairy wolf spider i see i take a pick.....roostmaster weres that pic of that monster in your dunny 2 weeks ago......the kids & women wouldnt go in unless that fucker was gone, so you & Pauly decide to scoop it up on a mop & through it at us.......FUK

[Roostius_Maximus]

wtf is that

[asteroid500]

A wolf spider can get as big as a trianchula, but there insanly agro & can jump more then a meter.....when there cornered they jump, usualy on you...not by desighn but fuck they hurt when they bite....it wont kill ya but there hairy scary mother fuckers....

[yota]

dude you win.

we have wolf spiders here which get pretty big but they are mainly in structures, don't run into them in the woods.

[asteroid500]

Ours are mostly in the scrub/woods they normaly live in the bark of the gum trees but when you turn lights on at night it brings in the bugs witch in turn bring in the gecos (a small lizard 3-4"long) witch then bring in the spiders...they like lizards, mice, big bugs.....

[dubious01]

I'm just glad the ugly mother fuckers live where you do, and not here!

[bearorso]

These are shit house pictures, but these mongrels are The Nastiest things you'll find. Wildly aggressive, their poison is mind blowingly toxic to Primates.They bite you, and you basically 'drown' in your own fluids...... And the worst thing is, these Fuckers live all around my area. When I'm gardening , they are always found, when I do track maintenance just up in the Blue Mountains, that I'm at the base of, they are in plague proportions. So when I do maintenance ,I keep layers of gear on, or just give up and strip down to shorts - I think their fangs would get through even the average boot.

You''ll be laying down in the scrub, sweating like a pig, and roll over to see one (or more) of these blokes rearing up and saying, come on you pussy, have a go. I've even had a few frights when I've been laying on big rock formations to try to keep clear of them.

We've zillions of snakes around, but, by stomping around they usually bugger off (not the Death Adders though, you've got to be wary of those blighters). The Funnel Webs , they just get even more pissed off. And the females can be huge, not far from being a BIG, hand sized item.

I hate them , and are scared shitless of them. I also regularly have a meal of dirty great big bird catching spiders, they build their webs over a trail, at perfect head height, and, if your lucky ( as in , you Know where the bloody thing is on you!) they get caught on your helmet, into the face guard. I've learnt to bite those bastards, before they bite me. They taste disgusting.

Funnel Webs are evil, I've just started to come across the Southern Tree Funnel Web in my area, too. They have longer legs, and climb into trees and brush. Not the sort of spider you want to have come into your helmet/ face guard. I've started to make my trails a bit wider, because of them, and try not to blithely rip through tree and scrub branches, as I have done all my life.

These things make me cry for my mommy

[2strokeforever]

bearoso have you ever shot one with a pellet gun?

start a hobby for the small kids...

o i forgot you live in Australia

[bearorso]

Yeh, when we were kids we had slug guns - pretty much shot anything that moved, including each other. How we surivived, I do not know....

At my best mates place, in Glenbrook, he had a horse paddock with a rock ledge / cave in the back corner, that had , perhaps, a hundred Funnel Web burrows - we'd pour water down the burrows and then try and shoot them with either the sluggy or a slingshot - the slingshot was the best fun, as it made a great splat / plop when you hit one.

No wonder the bloody things are out to get me now.................

We have gun ownership here by the way, it's just not a God given right for just any dickhead to have one - you have to go through a process . A process I'm glad that exists here. I might get back into sports / target shooting as my injuries and health take me over, but until then, I'll stick with 2 wheels of all types. I like guns and armoury from an engineering perspective. Not from a killing or defense perspective.

We send our kids outside to play with the those nasty critters - it's a common thing to hear a pissed off parent tell a little twerp, or twerpette, to "Go Outside And Play With The Funnel Webs".

[asteroid500]

Ive seen a wolf spider jump from the bed head to the ground of the foot of the bed...thats well over a meter....
But you win on the deadlyest poison factor & the female is nowere nere as big as a wolfie...
Bearso atlease we dont have to worry about bears chewing your head off while you sleep.

[bearorso]

But we all have to watch out for the Drop Bears, don't we? Grizzlies have got nothing on them.

Mind you, in the river 100 metres away from me, the scariest thing is oversized goldfish - you blokes up there can't go near the water because of those bastard crocodiles - bugger that for a joke - go for a swim, end up food for reptiles At least you've got a good chance at catching some barra, while your dodging dinosaurs - Hmmmm, probably worth the danger, barramundi rules!

Back to cleaning alloy - your acid baths a good idea, I use Very weak solutions for cleaning various heavier fabrications that I want to match HAZ zones to the base materials, though it's bloody important to make sure that you flush out all acid from the expansion / breather holes.

Caustic Soda is something most people might have sitting in their pantry as well - but it easy to stuff up with it, as people don't realize just how quick that stuff can hoe into alloy.

I rarely use anything other than various grades of scotch brite to clean / de-oxidise weld zones - I only use stainless brushes and stainless wool on big / thick alloy - the bicycle gauge alloys are so bloody sensitive to contamination, and so bloody thin, I can't even risk the slightest contamination. I'm getting to the point now that I'm going to stop doing light gauge aluminium frames - getting too blind and shaky for those jobs now.

[asteroid500]

undersides are done with heavy gage mig that as you'd know leaves a heavy soot around the weld...hard shit to remove when left over night, we tig all the top & visable sections with the tig...gotta say that theres a few guys in my work shop that weld mig to look like a tig....what amazes me was how fast the mig has to be moved when on a weld4 times faster then doing a steel weld.......
Biteys as follows in the Darwin CBD...Crocs, portugise man of war(box jelly fish-stingers), sharks, sand flies, mossies the size of marsh flies (they carry so many tropical diseases), 6 different leathal snakes, wild bore the size of schetland ponys (love rubbish day, monster feral pig dogs gone wild(visious attacking bastards), big hairy spiders............

now thats why i like snow covered areas...it kills everything.

[Roostmaster]

Hey Asteroid nice job on that silencer I gave you , mate can I have it back now??

& hows it going with the missus being away? the ole knob would be pretty polished by now hey?


Yeh that wolf spider at my place scared the shit outa the chicks, but you guys should see WTF crawls around the sahara desert.

Not long ago the locals ran off bitchin & screamin so I went to investigate and caught this big fuck off camel spider, apparently these pricks bite ya and its nigh nigh's. Once your kippin they mung a chunk outa ya leg, bastards have 2 top and 2 bottom big fuck off fangs that can work independantly.