Lucas Rear Motorcycle lamp, Electrolysis rust removal

[Peter Laidler]

Yu' know what....... there something quite good and telling about seeing how it really was, pitting an' all, beneath a coat of new paint. How many virtually and totally rusted out No32's are out there, optically and mechanically like brand new, with formerly rusted and pitted tubes but are now saved from the scrap yard. They're the ones that have a bit of history attached.

My pal found a stack of about 6 of old wartime blue Police and bronze green kakhi NFS/AFS helmets in an old council building being converted into flats. I arranged for them to be bead blasted and re-phosphated but the pitting was heavy and still remained of course. He had them painted in the correct colours and the sign-writer, an old fashioned one who used paint instead of stickers..... (and hand painted the logos on our Mod Sports car) repainted the white word POLICE and rank markers plus the red NFS (national fire service although one was marked AFS - Army?). And they did look very good. Just me of course

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[bigduke6]

Yu' know what....... there something quite good and telling about seeing how it really was, pitting an' all, beneath a coat of new paint

As Peter says, its good to see some vehicles that have obvious suffered in the past and have been restored, but still have a few scars. Several at the War & Peace show you can see were the owner has fought and won over "rust and corrosion" the lamp that started this tread is just an example, its been slow progress, weather in the last week has helped, so managed to managed to get some blasting done, and also to show the finish when using a product called metal brute, pics below, the f*g end come out not too bad and carries the original lens, the lamp holder was beyond repair and the one shown has been part machined from an old pump shaft, the main plate had been filled with braze but struggled to build up some of the edges, so built them using stainless steel (arc welder,thin rods and lots of patience).

The dull looking picture is after its been sand blasted and then left in a product called metal brite, we use this often in the Marine industry, its a basic mild solution of Phosphoric acid with some cleaning additives. it has now been painted in red oxide, (pic of this to follow near completion)










On a bigger scale and As the weather was with us for a time I managed to get the old paint stripped and cleaned up from something else and it then had the electrolysis treatment for around 18 hours, for obvious reasons a certain 5 year old was not too happy but did explain it was for a good reason (I knew I would get flak so purchased the one in the pic for £5.99 rather than use hers)












The dark areas on the tube in the blast tank are the conversion of the rust, may sound stupid but these area's (all over the frame) were hardly visible when the frame was just sanded, only after the Electrolysis was it visible and how bad it was, this is were folk trip up and see shiny metal and proceed to paint etc....... I can certainly say this was the mistake made by a previous owner, as the paint was little and could be removed with the finger nail basically "**** poor preparation"

Its nice to get the fist coat of red oxide primer on, (brushed) I've used the paint before on my phone box and the results were excellent, it needs a rub over with wet and dry and then the second coat applied, third coat will be a standard primer then two coats of Synthetic service brown........