There are lots of “extra” pieces attached to the frame on the FJ-40, all of which have taken a beating over the 20 years my truck has been on the road.
These include:
Each of these pieces has a fair amount of caked on dirt, pitted steel, and other junk like under coating. Cory and I didn’t want to spend the next several months cleaning these parts up by hand, so two methods are being tested. These are the Molasses technique, and using Naval Jelly. (Glass beading was a consideration, or sand blasting, but not attempted due to lack of funds.)
Naval Jelly
Cory started work on the fender supports on Thursday March 9th. Naval Jelly is brushed onto pitted steel.
The picture above was taken about halfway through the process. Cory basically painted the stuff on, let it sit for several hours, and then washes it off. Some simple scraping will remove lots of the pitted steel.
The pictures below were taken on Saturday March 11, two and a half days after first application. For the amount of time spent, and the attention needed to complete this process, it’s definitely high maintenance. However, it is faster than the other method we tested.
Molasses Method:
This method was originally posted to the Land Cruiser Mailing List over a year ago. (For anyone interested, please check out Getting Rid of Rust)
Basically you buy LOTS of molasses and a large plastic tub. The mix of molasses to water is 1:9. Cory took several parts and threw them into the tub. That was last Thursday March 9th. We plan to check out the parts in one weeks time. All the care that’s needed during the week is to jiggle the tub a little.
Here’s the battery tray before going into the tub.
More will be added to this as the process is completed.