So... I managed to score this flat 7123 hood. These are not reproduced and good examples can cost quite a bit. I got lucky and managed to buy this one for only 200 euros (about 230 US $). Of course it's not yet up to my restoration specs so I want it to become that way.
Having recently learned about a method involving lots of vinegar and a rust solvent called Rustyco I thought I'd give that a try as it's a relatively cheap method. I was yet to find out how much work it involves....
Let's start with the beginning:
Bringing my new score home :-)
It actually looks very nice and it's completely dent-free. Also it's got no visible rust.
However, there's always rust on the inside and when this one it turned over it sounds worse than a salt shaker.
Upon closer inspection there's always some rust to be found along the edges...
Then there's also this stuff inside. Probably left overs from sand blasting it before. It should've been cleaned better...
I stuck a camera inside to see how bad the rust is.
Apart from dirt there seems to be only surface rust which makes me happy!
So, time to start building the cleaning area!
Because my garage has no drain I needed to fluids to be collected in a different way so I created this...
Almost ready to go.
Before cleaning all the loose bits need to come off. Be careful when removing these, they can fall inside.
The front trim was stuck with old paint.
It can be carefully pried off thought.
Bag everything and put it somewhere safe.
To make sure I can access everything inside I needed to drill small holes in certain areas to put the hose through and spray the inside.
I also removed some of the sealer used to glue the inner sheet to the outer sheet of metal. Those are the red spots. The silver spots are the holes I drilled for spraying the inside. This will come in handy later.
Right, the first thing to do is to hose the hood down thoroughly and get as much crap out as possible.
I bed it will already make less noise!
After the hose down it needed to be dried and then taped.
The taping was a royal PITA. It took about 3 hours to get this hood done. Apparently a nasa-style hood only takes 1 hour... Lucky me.
Here's the whole hood taped up except for the loch-hole. That will be used to pour in the vinegar and Rustyco.
So, I poured in 4 litres of vinegar and closed up. Sure enough a few leaks sprung up even before I put the last bottle down. Crap! Not surprising with this amount of tape though.
I left the hood for the night letting the vinegar do it's rust-eating. The next day I was there from 9am till 4pm and I shook the hood every 10-15 minutes from every side so I'd get the vinegar everywhere.
The day after that I removed the tape at the tip and let all the vinegar out. Then I put in 3 litres of vinegat and half a litre of Rustyco. I shook that for the whole morning. In the afternoon I rinsed quite a few times with hot soapy water to get ph levels down and dried it with a heat gun.
Please take note of the mess I created...
And there it is, a flushed and cleaned and kinda de-rusted hood.
All the bare metal got flash rust on it, it turned orange while looking at it, unreal!
I sprayed Brunox everywhere inside and also on some spots on the outside. It does seem to react with the rust turning it black.
And that's all!
I found it a lot of work (3 full days excluding prep) and although it's cleaner than before I am not convinced about the rust being gone. I could feel areas still having surface rust and being untouched by the fluids. The Brunox will still work it's magic but still...
Meanwhile I have decided that if I want this hood to be 100% rust free, I'm going to have to get it dipped (stripped of paint + de-rusted + base coat), which is what's going to happen in a few weeks. What can I say, this was a learning process.
