HCL Acid Bath Lesson in Stupidity

[Allie]

Don't leave simple green on the part too long and be sure to rinse it all off. It has a bad long term effect on aluminum. IIRC, An aircraft company was using it to clean the planes, which worked quite nicely.

Except it pooled at the rivets, concentrated when the water evaporated, and compromised the rivets on the aircraft

I looked this up after our carbs were "growing" gunk (looked like soft silicon gel bits) after cleaning and rinsing with simple green.

BTW, we now rinse again with water and spray with WD40, which fixed the problem.

- John

That's good to know!

[Rudeman]

I like contact cleaner or brake cleaner for small jobs and good ol' elbow grease. I've sed the "green" brake cleaner and it is still very effective.

[Redneck]

I did elbow grease on most parts but I had heard of the acid bath... though I should have paid more attention to the type of acid.. and was trying to see if it would work to help remove some of the old paint along with the grease down in hard to get areas. It seemed to be working great.. unfortunately I did not apparently rinse enough... that or the aluminum absorbed the HCl. Anyway the simple green information is good. I have run into that problem during my cleaning. I would spray it on leave it come back and scrub out the grease... then would find a new type of residue left over.

Paul

[janner]

I have recently cleaned all my carbs with neat solution truck wash, aggravated it into a foam and rinsed immediately, then used my blow gun thoroughly on all surfaces to dry then immediately sprayed carbs with wd40, result is mint carbs with absolutely no residue whatsoever and looking like they have been vapour blasted, result