Cleaning rust off chrome exhaust

2_DONE_THE_TON

2_DONE_THE_TON

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Hey guys!

its winter and I want to clean off light and medium surface rust off of my XS 750 chromed exhaust.
Especially the welding seams have a good amount of rust.

What would you guys use to clean it?
Read a lot about .00 steel wool and WD40 or even Coca-Cola...?

Thanks in advance!
 
I cannot speak highly enough of glass cook top cleaner and aluminum foil. Seriously, results are amazing

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Ryan Stecken said:
Read a lot about .00 steel wool and WD40 or even Coca-Cola...?
Click to expand...

Coca-Cola has phosphoric acid in it, which converts rust to iron phosphate. Same stuff we like to talk about for tank rust removal and so on. That's why Coca-Cola is useful for rust removal or even breaking loose rusty bolts. I like to clean rusty chrome with SOS pads first. Then some phosphoric acid to convert the rust, then a polish with the finest steel wool as has been suggested. Aluminum foil works nicely to cover up any rust (or black iron phosphate spots) you couldn't get rid of, since polishing with it just transfers aluminum from the foil to the rust. Because rust expands so much, what you see before you start is typically much worse than when the rust is gone.
 
Get the rough stuff like that, then polish up with autosol or similar. I electropolished mine, had a machine at the workplace at the time. Brilliant results.
 
Oh yeah, Autosol is great stuff. There's also some good stuff called Simichrome.
 
ok guys!first I need to get the huge exhaust of my XS 750 pig off :-)...since I´m going to bee on crotches for the most part of january I will have some time for some elbow grease work :-)
 
Everyone blowing over the aluminum foil and water suggestions is an idiot. You have both of those things at home. Try it once. I usually just spit on it and scrub it with the aluminum foil.

I took an alley shrimp Chicago schwinn with a banana seat to a $250 craigslist sale with a 30 minute tune up, about 3 ft of aluminum foil and an hour of elbow grease.

Just try it. It works. Leave the rest on the shelf at Napa Auto
 
Cursh said:
Everyone blowing over the aluminum foil and water suggestions is an idiot. You have both of those things at home. Try it once. I usually just spit on it and scrub it with the aluminum foil.

I took an alley shrimp Chicago schwinn with a banana seat to a $250 craigslist sale with a 30 minute tune up, about 3 ft of aluminum foil and an hour of elbow grease.

Just try it. It works. Leave the rest on the shelf at Napa Auto
Click to expand...

I'm a fan of this as well, at least as a first step, and I usually finish with polish. For burned on oil it's Easy Off oven cleaner...
 
Cursh said:
Everyone blowing over the aluminum foil and water suggestions is an idiot. You have both of those things at home. Try it once. I usually just spit on it and scrub it with the aluminum foil.

I took an alley shrimp Chicago schwinn with a banana seat to a $250 craigslist sale with a 30 minute tune up, about 3 ft of aluminum foil and an hour of elbow grease.

Just try it. It works. Leave the rest on the shelf at Napa Auto
Click to expand...

Is it actually removing the rust from the chrome or just "covering it up"?
Will try definitely, just don´t want to have alloy embedded into my precious XS mufflers ;D
 
Ryan Stecken said:
Is it actually removing the rust from the chrome or just "covering it up"?
Will try definitely, just don´t want to have alloy embedded into my precious XS mufflers ;D
Click to expand...
It's supposed to help transfer oxygen from the steel to the aluminum and produce aluminum oxide, which is harder than steel and will then polish the steel. I'm not poo poo-ing using aluminum foil. That's how I usually do forks. The metal polishes suggested will have aluminum oxide in them as well, most likely. If you want to mechanically polish the chrome, then polish from a tube or can is probably easier. Coke, phosphoric acid and other methods work well because they free up the oxygen altogether by bonding it with hydrogen. Six in one hand, half dozen the other.
 
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