BMW R65LS Restoration

Rust

As you might expect with a thirty three year old piece of machinery which has been sitting unused in a damp garage for sixteen years, rust and corrosion have set in.

Google turned up quite a few methods of rust removal I had not heard of before.  The simplest and what seem to be the most effective are vinegar and .electrolysis 

Vinegar

This is an absurdly simple method.
Get some cheap vinegar (clear is best, for no other reason than you can see what you have put in it).
Pour it into a container (old ice cream cartons are good).
Drop you rusty bits into it, leave 24 hours, taken them out a finish with a wire brush.
Lots of articles on the web on de-rusting via vinegar

Here is an example of a piece of old iron I derusted in vinegar. It was rusted so badly that I could not get a connection to it.  The reason for getting the rust off was to use it as an anode in the electrolysis tank below.

Electrolysis

This is only slightly more complicated.
You dissolve some washing soda in water in a container.
Connect the piece to be de-rusted to the negative wire of a power supply
Connect a piece of scrap iron or steel to the positive wire
Put both into the solution and switch on.
Details on electrolysis are all over the web.

Here is a picture of my de-rusting electrolysis set up.

After either of these treatments a good rub with a wire brush will clean down to the bare metal. I use a brass suede brush, a steel wire brush or a rotary brush on an electric drill (The drill is a Black and Decker die cast model I bought for my father - you can get an idea of it's age - it cost my £6.19s.6d. It's on it's second rotor and third set of brushes).

Contents


Background
To do
Rust
Tank
Seat
Exhaust
Links




Photo-Electric