cleaning aluminum?

[charliew13]

Ok I did search but maybe didn't use the right words. Has anyone come across a good wash that will remove rust and other ugly stains from a aluminum club car? I have it down to only the steering column left in it so now is the time to try to clean it. My carryall is really stained up from years of neglect. Rust stains, some tree sap stains, battery acid and so on. I sand blasted the frame to get the bulk of the battery corrosion off but the outer skin is pretty stained up. I found a biodegradble cleaner online but it actually doesn't say anything about rust stains. Most of these stains are from steel bolts that were put in the body but overall it's pretty dingey and I bet there is a aviation or boat cleaner that will work for this.

Looking for ideas.

[Furyous]

I got some aluminum jelly from Home Depot- you brush it on and rinse it off with water. Worked pretty good.


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[charliew13]

I called a coupla boat places to see what people used to clean pontoons and they have some stuff so if I can't use something I already have like clr or tsp or bleach diluted I will go buy something.

[jwalsh965]

There is an acid you can get at a welding supply store called oxy-off, its a liquid and strong but great, but do use in a well vented area ok, not good for lungs. Hope this works out for you.

[jeffro157]

we have used snow bowl toilet cleaner to cleam aluminum truck beds it will turn them white if left on too long
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[roady89]

For rust stains go to your local supermarket and in the cleaning section by the fabric dyes theres a product called "iron out".....we use this stuff on welding beds to get out rust stains. Its a bottle of liquid. Also a product called rust out....sure theres others

For aluminum I used to use Eagle one etching mag cleaner but I think they discontinued the name and named it something else. Its in a silver bottle at places like Auto zone.


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wow thats good info roady !!!

[tacho75]

thanxs..i am building a carryall 1 and i was n need of this info...

[charliew13]

Good pictures. Man there is a lot of difference between frames on the cayrryall and regular cc. Mine is about 3 feet longer I think it might be the same frame as a six passenger cc.

Well I tried some tsp I already had on hand and it worked to some degree. Now it has varing shades of grey and sanding marks. This cart had a complete coverage of something I at first thought was road tar but mineral spirits, high grade kerosene, laquer thinner, soap and water and then the tsp didn't do much. I actually just scraped as much as I could off after letting it soak with kerosene a few days then a 2 inch blending disk on what I could get to and then used scotchbrite and tsp to get the rest off. A small hf ss brush worked pretty good around all the welds and joints to get in the cracks. That and the battery corrosion made this a real bear to clean up. The corrosion had to be blasted off. Thank god for my front end loader to raise the body up to do the bottom.

My wife is going to town and she will look for some of the stuff mentioned here thanks.

[boatair]

I use a mag wheel cleaner from the auto parts store.