OK, last night I pulled the hood latch off as it was really sticking. I sat at the table with my daughter (my helper), some tools and 2 cans of WD40 and we proceeded to tear the latch apart. First thing we discovered is we need a better hand cleanser. After about 30 minutes of scrapping dirt/oil/whoknowswhat off of the latch, I discovered that I couldn't get to the inner works of the latch. There are two bolts/pins that I couldn't get apart. Am I not supposed to get in there? Seems to be a lot of rust on the springs and stuff so I thought it would be good to clean them up, or should I just spray them with the WD40 and put it all back together? Also, the exterior parts I'm going to tread with POR-15 so that it'll look nice and have some rust protection. Good idea? Hmmm...it would help if I could spell HOOD.
I have had good success by soaking them in WD40 - not spraying - soaking. You can buy a gallon can of WD40 at any big "man" store for about $15. An old kitchen pot with a lid makes a great soaking tank for smaller parts. Leave it soak and once or twice a day take it out and work the latch several times to get it freed up. Number of days soaking will depend on how rusty and gunked up it is.
A stop at the Goodwill store for an old pot is a much better choice than the wife's cookware .........
If you have a battey charger you can make this less than $15 Just plug it up and sit back and let it do all the work. http://www.1bad6t.com/rust_removal.html
OK, that's just cool! wonder if my in-laws would let me borrow their pool for the weekend and just treat the whole car.
Need an arc welder instead of batter charger. You could dig a big hole in the backyard and line it with plastic.
No matter how you get it clean you should lubricate the moving parts with a good lubricant. WD40 is not a lubricant - it is a water displacer and it dries leaving no protection or lubrication. You can get spray silicone lube or just use ATF - both have corrosion inhibitors to prtect the parts from rust. Just a note for future rederence: ATF and kerosine 50/50 makes an excellent penetrating oil/degreaser and leaves behind a good lubricant that retards any rust formation.
I bought some stuff, Evap-o-rust...you dip the parts, and let them soak over night, and it actually works. It was cheap, $9.99 for a decent sized jug.
X2!!! Love my rust bucket!! Got a big plastic tub at Ace Hardware for mine. Great way to de-rust steel wheels or anything you can fit in the bucket. One tip: My battery charger wouldn't put out enough amps, I think because it wasn't getting any voltage back and thought it was working on a really dead battery. Solution was to connect the electrodes to a battery and put the charger on the battery.
