Hubs

The next bit of cleaning is the front and rear hubs. These came from the donor MX5, and while they were in usable condition, a few years of sitting around has left them dirty and rusty. In particular the brake dust guard on the front hub is pretty bad. Then again, that's about normal for most cars, and I tend to remove them when they get too bad. Fingers crossed these might be ok, but only time will tell.

The rears were first, an overnight soak in deox c rust remover got rid of a lot of it. I did make a bit of a mistake though. You're meant to scrub the metal on a regular basis to dislodge the bits of rust. I did do this, but I was scrubbing it in the rust remover bath. So basically I was giving the rust remover so much extra work to do!! What I should have done is took it out and scrubbed it separately, that would have allowed the rust remover to only work on attached rust. As it stands the rears are now mostly done, but I've got through an entire bottle of rust remover doing it.

For the fronts, I'll be doing it properly. I have one bucket of 1:20 rust remover (1 part remover to 20 parts water), then in another bucket I have water with washing up liquid. There's a hub in each of them now, what I'll do is every so often swap them over, and whichever one ends up in the water bucket will get scrubbed. Hopefully this will make the rust remover go a bit further.

Having said that, the rust remover has been truly excellent. It's not overly cheap (and even more expensive if you use it wrong!), but being able to just leave the part in a bucket to sort itself out is really useful. I had planned on electrolysis first, but I was having real trouble with finding a location where it wouldn't get interfered with by wildlife or the elements, where I can DC power safely, and where the gases can escape. At least the rust remover can just be done in the garage.

Pictures of the hubs to follow, I should do a before and after but because I didn't do a 'before' it will be just an 'after'. Then on to the next job.