Resurrection of my CQ20V

[John.]

It's raining, does that count?

Makes no odds......a picture's a picture!

[Bowie69]

True

Will try and get it washed by the weekend. Slightly lighter evenings help with this...

On another note, I don't think I mentioned it, a suicidal bunny ran out in front of me when I was doing, e-hem, over 60mph and managed to take out my lower front grille, the one that sits within the grey bit of the bumper. I managed to find the towing eye cover in the ditch but the grille was smashed to bits

So if anyone has one of them about , lemme know

[Bowie69]

New lower font grille fitted now, so front end looks complete again

Also, been noticing a slight misfire at lower RPM, and especially when cold... thought about it a while, and thought the cheapest thing to do first was a set of plugs, transformed the car totally!

Instead of the original tri-electrode type, I fitted some NGK Iridium plugs, part number BKR7EIX , which seem to fit very nicely, the mis-fire is totally gone now, and I am heading towards 400 miles on this tank of fuel, which I haven't been close to in about a year....

The old plugs were about 30K old, and appeared worn -the centre electrode was a rounded triangular shape... so I reckon 20K on original plugs is probably about right to change. Will see how the iridium plugs fare

[Vorsprung durch Technik]

New lower font grille fitted now, so front end looks complete again

Also, been noticing a slight misfire at lower RPM, and especially when cold... thought about it a while, and thought the cheapest thing to do first was a set of plugs, transformed the car totally!

Instead of the original tri-electrode type, I fitted some NGK Iridium plugs, part number BKR7EIX , which seem to fit very nicely, the mis-fire is totally gone now, and I am heading towards 400 miles on this tank of fuel, which I haven't been close to in about a year....

The old plugs were about 30K old, and appeared worn -the centre electrode was a rounded triangular shape... so I reckon 20K on original plugs is probably about right to change. Will see how the iridium plugs fare

Great plugs the iridiums and you certainly notice the difference. I run all my cars on them.

[Bowie69]

Iridiums have made the care run VEEEEERRY smoothly again, pretty pleased

On to other things....

Newsh very kindly helped me out by sending me his old rear calipers a while ago, safe to say any second hand calipers are going to be in a pretty sorry state (no this is NOT is whinge!), I bought them knowing in advance I was going to rebuild, and even had the kit from Big Red before I asked on here for them

As arrived... mmmmmm cruuuusty



I stuck them in my electrolysis dustbin (if you want to know more, just ask) and left them for a few days, great thing about this solution, using soda crystals along with the electrolysis, is it removes all the paint as well. After a quick clean up after the dunking they looked like this:



Rebuilt with Big Red's rebuild kit, new bleed nipples and a couple of coats of black ZG-90 paint, they looked like this:



...and ready for fitting yesterday, silver spring is just a splash of engine enamel to try and stop it rusting for a while:



Fitting was very simple, as I am sure most of you will realise, it is not exactly rocket science! One brake pipe union rounded off, which I found quite surprisingly to be brass(!), cue make up a new brake line from stock, as losing the half inch or so meant it would be too short! Fortunately it was passenger side, where the T is mounted to the body right behind the chassis rail.

Fitted them, with new hoses, and bled them up using Gunsons Eezibleed, which I find excellent, lovely firm brake pedal afterwards.

The driving force behind all this? Well, I finally have a handbrake than works on both wheels

[diesel des]

I would love more details on your electrolysis bin. Cheers

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[Bowie69]

OK, electrolysis bin is pretty simple

Take one dustbin, fill with water, chuck in 6 x 1Kg bags of soda crystals, around £10

Mix well, may take a while to get it all dissolved properly. The soda crystals are mainly there for allowing conduction through the water, however they also soften and release paint from the items, through the nature of the chemical. It is not a strong chemical, I have had my hands in it many times with no adverse effects, though I would of course recommend gloves to anyone else

Now, the techy bit... get an old dumb car battery charger, 10a or so, mine is 25A start'n'charge but no need for anything that galumpy.

Find a piece of stainless steel, I am using a section of old exhaust pipe, this will be your ANODE, i.e. you connect the positive lead from the charger to this. My piece of exhaust is about the the height of the dustbin, which was handy. I use a quite release g-clamp to hold it to the side of the bin.

Next, we need to work out a cathode, it also needs to be steel, not copper, or it will get digested This gets connected to the work piece, I tend to use fencing wire, which for smaller bits I can form into hooks easily. You need to have a reasonable electrical connection here, so I have a file handy to scrape some of the scunge off before dunking. I have used some cheap mole grips to hold the wire in place where a connection is poor.

Then... put the work piece into the solution, you should see a current begin to flow, and bubbles appear around the work piece. I find 10A +/- 5A to be OK, too little and it is rather slow, to much, and you get loads of foam, warm water, and fizzing noises

You can adjust the current by changing voltage (if you have a 6V/12V/fast charge) charger) making the distance between workpiece and anode greater, or reducing the size of the anode, by lifting it out of the solution and clamping it further up.

When doing lots of small pieces, I made a frame up to fit across the bin, which I have some holes drilled in, and use this to hang pieces from fencing wire to get as many going as possible.

I will grab a pic when next there, it's a bit heath robinson, but works very, very well. I even did an entire 70 year old cast iron toilet cistern recently

[Bowie69]

Oh, and if anyone wants to do the same to their calipers, they are welcome to my old ones for postage!

[diesel des]

Cool. Sounds a bit like the Cathodic protection systems we use on pipelines. The bubbles are likely to be hydrogen gas so be careful!

I have a few power supplies I could use for this so might give it a go. Where did you get the soda crystals in bulk?

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[Bowie69]

There's a link in second line of my post about it Ebay

Some further notes about it here, though I substitute the rebar for stainless -much less cleaning needed: http://www.instructables.com/id/Elec...val-aka-Magic/

and some more: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/andyspatch/rust.htm

and another: http://www.myfordtractors.com/electrolysis.shtml

I do this in a very well ventilated log store, so not too worried about the gas, but very good warning

The way it works is to transform the red rust Fe203 to black rust, Fe3O4, which then falls off the parent material.

[diesel des]

Ok thanks I will get a setup put together and give it a try. Cheers

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[Nj]

Love this witchcraft! I'm definitely trying this. Although I have a couple of questions..
On the Instructables page, the writer says "DO NOT USE STAINLESS STEEL". Any idea why he says this if you used stainless?
What exactly are soda crystals? I need to find the equivalent in Finland.
cheers

[Bowie69]

He's scared about chromium potentially getting into solution from the stainless, this causing legal implications in the US of A for disposal, potentially in EU, though I don't really know

My view is that stainless does indeed eventually break down in soil, so the difference between it being buried somewhere and in some solution is very little. I'm not positive that it even eats the chromium out of the stainless as it is, so who knows

If you use steel for the anode, with very rusty or large pieces, you will be forever cleaning the muck off it, which slows the electrolysis down a LOT. I disliked doing this, so found a piece of scrap stainless instead

Soda crystals are just 'washing soda', believe this is the same as on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_carbonate

[Nj]

Awesome, thanks. If I take the same approach as with my old engine oil I can bottle the waste water with great intentions of taking to the proper place for disposal.. but end up keeping it for a ridiculous length of time..
I'll see what I have kicking about to use. I don't even know what I need to clean yet but I'm bound to find something soon on my 27 year old CQ eh? Especially when I start taking everything apart to change the timing belt, water pump, radiator etc etc..

Google translate tells me Sodium carbonate is "Sooda". Could be interesting as I try to clean car parts with sprite or something..

[Bowie69]

To be honest, when I did my timing belt (shown earlier in the thread), I used the tank then to de-paint and de-rust the belt shrouding while I was doing the rest of the job, with the current turned up it only took an hour or so to clean the parts

Then I painted them and bolted them into place while the paint was only very slightly tacky...

Washing soda in finnish is pesusooda ? Literally for washing clothes in...