How do you clean die cast trucks?

Let me throw one more question at ya, do you think Evapo-Rust will remove the chemical blackening? I seem to remember that as a concern from some previous discussion - and I really don't like the look of spray painted trucks.

And as long as I'm on the topic, have you ever chemically blackened your trucks? Is that a process that might be commercially available (at a reasonable cost) somewhere?

George

Great question George. Looking forward to the answers.  

@Rich Wiemann posted:

Great question George. Looking forward to the answers.  

Me too, Rich - otherwise it's a good scrubbing in Dawn with about a 50% clean result. Interesting experiment last night, I dry scrubbed both (previously untouched) couplers with a fairly soft toothbrush and about 99% of the corrosion came off. Dunno if it was the nature of the metal or what, but it did a great job. That said, the corrosion on the truck side frames seems a lot worse, so that may be why it didn't work as well there.

I do not like to introduce any water to the zinc, so I wash the castings with naphtha.  Then the casting is wiped and air blown dry. Then I spray the castings with Triflo, which is a light oil with Teflon powder in it.  I scrub the oily castings with a bristle brush.  The fine detail is cleaned with small head cotton swabs on wooden sticks. These are available from McMaster-Carr. Then the casting is blown dry and dried with paper towels. The areas that are heavily corroded with either rust or zinc oxide will be lightly wire wheeled with a Dremel stainless brush first.  This method almost always removes the white corrosion and restores the black finish. I have been using this method for many years and have never needed to repeat it.

@David Johnston posted:

I do not like to introduce any water to the zinc, so I wash the castings with naphtha.  Then the casting is wiped and air blown dry. Then I spray the castings with Triflo, which is a light oil with Teflon powder in it.  I scrub the oily castings with a bristle brush.  The fine detail is cleaned with small head cotton swabs on wooden sticks. These are available from McMaster-Carr. Then the casting is blown dry and dried with paper towels. The areas that are heavily corroded with either rust or zinc oxide will be lightly wire wheeled with a Dremel stainless brush first.  This method almost always removes the white corrosion and restores the black finish. I have been using this method for many years and have never needed to repeat it.

Thanks David, I'll give it a go! Surprisingly, I have a small spray can of Triflo from years ago, just forgot about it. I will need to purchase some Naptha however. I'll let you know how it comes out.

George

I left some postwar truck sides soaking in evaporust overnight instead checking it every few hours and yes that did remove all the chemical blacking and turned it whitish. I returned it to a good appearance by blueing it.

@Obuckler posted:

I left some postwar truck sides soaking in evaporust overnight instead checking it every few hours and yes that did remove all the chemical blacking and turned it whitish. I returned it to a good appearance by blueing it.

How did you blue it? Which product and what process? I looked thru the spare trucks I have and found a candidate to experiment on - half of one side frame is "normal" while the other half is missing all chemical darkening - This truck is useless as-is, so it would be a great one to experiment on. Plus I have several other trucks where the black appearance could use improvement.

George

I used birchwood casey super blue. There are others I am sure.

Took a few applications.