I have been perfecting a recipe to remove rust with minimal metal loss using simple household stuff and I finally got it right ! and I thought I would share with all of you!

the best mixture I have made so far is as follows:

1/2 gallon of white vinegar

1/3 cup of salt

1 of those yellow squeeze lemon juice bottles.

which I think are around 6- 8 ounces "realemon" lemon juice


I have tried countless combos over the past year!!

This combo just seems to work the best! and you

can reuse it and reuse it!

All you have to do is soak it for a minimum of 12 hours or longer if the rust is deep.. and it comes off like mud !! I used a generic scotch brite pad to get some of the hard residue off and the parts come out looking like they were sand blasted ! Plus it costs less than 5 dollars a gallon to make!

I attached pics of my results my cell phone is taking fuzzy pics right now and i will try and update with some better pics!

Here is a pic of the before rusted parts

and here is how I soaked them the only areas that remain rusted up are the areas I wasn't able to submerge.. these were soaked for 12 hours and scrubbed lightly with a scotchbrite pad !

Awesome!!!

kool thanks for shareing

Dam you now I have to go to the store!!!!

That guy at Carlisle with the girls in black short shorts that was across the isle from me who was pushing some rust remover elixir isn't gonna like this free recipe

This sounds very interesting. I'm curious if you've tried it on parts that were zinc plated. Also what would this do to aluminum, plastic and paint.

I bought some of the Armour Metal Rescue which I believe is the product that girls were selling shorts at Carlisle. I bought mine at Hershey and it was a little colder so the girls weren't wearing shorts. I like this product in certain instances. What is nice is that it won't strip paint or plating that is adhered to the metal well and will not harm plastic aluminum etc. If you have a part that is partially rusty and partially painted this is a good product. I had some NOS alternator pulleys which were mostly painted but the belt groove and a small ring around the center were bare and had rusted over the years. I soaked them in this product and it cleaned the rust and left the paint adhered. I also soaked an alternator stator with rusty laminations and it took the rust off the laminations and didn't affect the magnet wire.

There was also a guy there selling a product of essentially dried beets that you mixed with water. I was not real keen on this stuff as he said it would attack aluminum.

For zinc plated parts that I want to strip I have been using Captain Lee's rust away. This is a Phosphoric acid solution that is not near as harsh as some of the muriatic acid solutions. I think the amount of the metal it takes away is minimal. The major drawback as I see it is that it costs $30.00 per gallon.

Mike Afflerbach

Salt, Vinegar, lemon bottle? Sounds more like a salad dressing!
Though, how did you figure out how to use salt as a rust remover?

Excellent, thanks for sharing. I love the internets.

cool!! how do you neutralize the acids after your done?

I was kinda wondering about that myself.

I usually mix up a batch of baking soda and water to neutralize the parts I put in muratic acid.

Very interesting!

just made a batch. doing a super6 intake i am going to flog. if it doesnt turn out well i will just blast it, by those pics it should come out pretty good.

Would a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water neutralize the acids? That's what it takes to neutralize metal after a soda blast.

Or acetone/Eastwood Pre?

I don't think baking soda and water would work if the surface was going to be primed or painted. Baking soda residue won't let the primer stick to the surface. At least that's the case with soda blasting - all the soda must be neutralized.

Making some "free" stuff to use in a pinch is not the same as making it for routine regular use. Calculate the cost to make a full gallon and then let's see where you are. There are plenty of good "natural" rust solutions on the market. The one I use is $20/gallon for a concentrate that will yeild 4 gallons when mixed. At that price is it really worth all the farting around? That's time you could have been working on your car or spending with your kids.