Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Rust is the bane of the classic car world. It’s ugly, it’s destructive and left festering long enough, it can gnaw important chassis or steering components to the point where they are no longer strong enough to trust.

But surface rust is rust you can beat. This slip yoke was bolted to the back of a 45-year-old Borg Warner T10 that sat on a wrecking yard’s shelf in want of a buyer (a lucky buyer!) for decades. It looked rough–in other words, perfect for my favorite rust removing tools, a bench grinder with wire wheel and a glass-bead cabinet.

The wire wheel buzzes off rust with aplomb, leaving a polished shine on this steel casting.

It’s a wheel though, and while careful angling can get its rust-scrubbing bristles into some nooks, others are too tight for a large spinning disk to reach into.

That’s where the glass-bead cabinet shines (figuratively). In fact, it leaves a satin finish, but its gritty blasts can reach tight gaps and corners and blow rust into the ether.

These two shop bulwarks and about ten minutes’ effort brought a piece rough enough you might throw it in the scrap bin back to like-new condition. Now that’s just fun.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Car parts, Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.