Best Treatment For Fasteners

[Bruce2]

Right Lee, the RoT is don't use SS for critical suspension locations.

[hugging corners]

http://www.nulltime.com/zincplating/sho ... index.html
wow and my brain is on fire again that electical dencity or whatever~ 100mA to 30mA setup is driving me nuts!
subforum info; follow the link to 305 honda forum half way down the first post
http://www.triumphrat.net/classic-vinta ... -home.html

[E_bug]

There is a DIY rust proofing that we used for ship nuts and bolts.

Heat up the fasteners you want treated , have a bucket full of used engine oil and dip them into the oil while they are hot.
Take em out and let them cool off.

Have a fan ventilating your area , gloves and body protection and of course a fire extinguisher available.
Does not smell good but it worked for salty environments.

[hugging corners]

whatsup ebug
you know what ive tried that trick, which i think is theoryticall a bluing right?
...but i could not achieve that dark finish on hardware, plus i was afraid to torch it too much (burn the metal) which makes it soft and looses hardening.
with that zinc plating you can just dip it in acid and chromate it to make it black.

no wrong or right way it that regards.
thanx for input yet nice to hear about the salty enviromnent resistance.

[E_bug]

Whatever works
Plating sounds awesome.

[hugging corners]

how hot do you get the hardware- red hot, or just to the point of offgassing like to put camgear on the shaft?

[E_bug]

To hot is bad for suspension and control arm stuff, usually a little just before orange and dip them in gets the job done.

[Devastator]

Black oxide and black zinc are not the same thing, so be careful when buying hardware. Black oxide will rust more rapidly than black zinc.
Anodizing was mentioned in the first post. I just wanted to add that you can only anodize aluminum and magnesium alloys. Just in case someone was reading this and didn't know that.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

“Oil blackening is a very old process used before the chemical treatments. My father used it in his shop and I do too. It does provide rust protection and the film is very tough. However I've never heard of heating the metal and dunking in oil.
This is the way it is done. Coat the part with used or new motor oil. Bake at 350 or medium oven temp until black. If a deeper shade is desired repeat the process. Used oil provides a dark finish and new unused oil gives a golden brown.

Dick”

Source: http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/ge ... ion-84713/

Heating them to anywhere near an orange or a red color is getting way too close to heating them for tempering and dipping them into oil is the second part of tempering the bolt in the first place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering. If you do it wrong you can seriously weaken the fastener or make it brittle. When I wrote the piece on replacing the studs for shocks on the front suspension I talked about this.

Another option for heat treating is cryogenics but as far as I know it doesn’t do much for surface preparation.

Lee


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anodizing

Steel can be anodized and it can be done at home from what I understand (I've seen the spec on it). When I get back home I will try to remember to add the website I found for doing anodizing.

[E_bug]

I learned that process at my uncles machine shop. Used oil from diesel engines gives a nice black coating
We had a rig that would dip the parts in the tub with the oil and after a boil over i would take them out to cool of. I once put a lot of bolts in the tub and the oil caught fire . Lots of smoke and not too much fun to watch 5 gallons of used oil to ignite . I put a piece of plywood over it and it went out....

New synthetic oil just needs higher temperatures to bake to that golden brown

You definitely have to be carefully not to degrade the material properties by overheating them.

[hugging corners]

is it safe to treat hardware with muratic acid prior to baking, to eliminate the traces of previous rust spots?
youtube videos shows it being done it to metal prior to plating- so called pickling, but plating adds up material.

[dunegoon]

I don't recommend muratic (hydrochloric ) acid because it's almost impossible to remove the residual chlorine atoms from the metal surface no matter how well you rinse. Just as with sea water, the chlorine will accelerate corrosion. It's better to use phosphoric acid which is the main component of the metal conditioners at the paint store. If you are good at reading labels, you will find it also used in some household cleaners that are used to remove scale (such as some toilet bowl cleaners). Cola drinks can be used also according to some. Others advise using vinegar.

Another way to remove rust is with an electrolytic process, see http://www.instructables.com/id/Electro ... aka-Magic/. I've had great luck with this process.

For DIY plating and such, check out http://www.caswellplating.com/ I have not dealt with these people personally but others have recommended them to me.

Mainly though, I use a lot of SS washers to limit electrolysis and Krylon 1301 clear lacquer spray paint to keep it looking nice.

[hugging corners]

thats what i am going to do!!!
ive uses electrolises, have a whole station designated for it... viewtopic.php?f=43&t=116373&start=45 half way down the page
...also used phosphoric, but both of them leave residual, which might prevent plating transfer inside of tread grooves.
I was hoping ive had a small 12v motor from frankensteined microwave, to build plating set up (3 rpms per minute), but that motor is gone probably due to clutter/seasoning cleaning.
I will experiment with cocacola, molases and vinegar to compare the methods. Those are just a fasteners and i have plenty of time before plating station build

ps:ol'f edit i figured too much details:)

[Ol'fogasaurus]

The one thing to think about when using SS/CRES is that, as far as fasteners go; grade 5 rating for SS nuts and bolts is a tad lower in strength than the grade 5 steel bolts; I forget how the rating goes for AL fasteners.

If you are going to use the SS washers because of a dissimilar metal problem then you should also use the bolt and, if you are not using a washer under the nut then the nut should be SS also. You might be able to get by with a neutral (material) sleeve to keep electrolysis to a minimum assuming you are doing it correct in the first place. I would not rely on paint to be an isolator as movement of materials through use or heat/cold growth or shrinkage can wear at the paint and then there are paints that may have components materials that can exacerbate the problem themselves.

Now if you are talking about the higher end SS fasteners such as what ARP (for instance http://www.arp-bolts.com/) sells for engine innards, then you are talking about something else. The materials they use are different than box store products carry and the design, especially under the head, is much different.

Also be leery of the terms "aircraft quality" or words similar to that when buying things when they are using a fed standard term tied to it in product advertising; be leery of terms like AN (yeah, I know I harp on this a lot) as you really don't know what you are getting without the proper documentation that, if it truly meets all the requirements’ of the Fed standard it supposedly is, needs to be supplied to prove it really is what you are buying (or think you are buying. Remember, the documentation of the materials, processes and testing are going to raise the price of the product to Aerospace prices; if it is too cheap… then it probably is). The term AN (Army Navy) has morphed over the years into a generic term like Kleenex for facial tissues or Jell-O for gelatin food for certain metal products. Many of the so-called AN standards are really MS, AN, AND, NAS or any of several other "standards" and may be made off-shore where quality control (QC), contract and/or materials/specifications are a lot different.

Just a few words of warning.

Lee

Growing old is not a choice, growing up often is but then that can be a problem too.

[dunegoon]

Here is more detail on my process for nuts, bolts, washers (stuff). I usually do a couple of pounds at a time to make it worth the effort:

• Wash with solvent- I know this is supposed to be unsafe, but gasoline works best.
  Visual inspection- throw out the bad stuff.
  Rinse with water, put the batch in a can and spray heavily with oven cleaner (Sodium Hydroxide), soak for several hours.
  Water rinse- blow dry with compressed air.
  Into the vibratory cleaner. This has little pointy ceramic media and vibrates. This removes most of the rust mechanically.
  Next day, pour out the media and stuff, separate with a magnet and by hand. Water rinse, dry with compressed air.
  Sort: clean enough vs. still rusty. The rusty stuff can be electrolysis cleaned and then routed back to the vibratory cleaner.
  Optional phosphoric acid treatment for a few minutes , then rinse and dry. Don't do this to any zinc or cadmium plated items, the plating will be ruined!
  Protect with light oil such as WD-40.

I know this sounds like a lot, but chemicals and machines do most of the work for you while you are busy elsewhere. Besides, buying correct metric hardware in the correct lengths and sizes can be very expensive. A trip to the hardware store takes me about an hour round-trip and costs about $5 in gas plus the lost work time. This process is for re-using stuff, not for preparing for a plating process.

Bonus points for the obsessive / compulsive : sort them all into bins.