It works, but just make sure you rinse the whole thing and the block out with a solution of baking soda and water to neutralize the acid from the vinegar or it will immediately flash rust again.
Old gas tank on an Isuzu Trooper had a ton of surface rust from sitting for several years, dropped the tank and filled it full of vinegar and left it in the sun for a day, after drained it out and just using a garden hose and sprayer nozzle all the rust and crap came out, tank was shiny inside. Rinsed it, filled it with water and baking soda to neutralize any vinegar left, drained it and rinsed it and let it dry out. All the rust issues were gone. Cost $30 for the vinegar and was totally worth it. New pump in it and works great.
You can do the same thing by jacking up a working car, tractor, portable cement mixer, etc - anything that rotates slowly - and strapping the gas tank to that and then pouring pea gravel in it halfway and then sealing it shut. Then let it spin around for several hours. The gravel will help beat and scrape the rust off. Neighbors will hate you, but it works. Then wash it out or take it to a shop and get it re-coated as needed (the exposed metal will continue to rust when exposed to the petrol and will leech rust into your fuel)
this is exactly the video i needed to see. i have a buick 350 that got doused in hurrican harvey. its full and the pistons are rusted in. was rebuilt before the rain so it has new pistons i wanna use in my old build so this looks to save them. sweet!
Great video. I have some slight rust in the cylinders (probably come off during honing), but the main concern is the rust in the gallies. If I can plug them off I can definitely consider trying this and/or solutions that are more aggressive. If the engine is light enough after I remove the crank and all that, I’d prefer electrolysis or hot tanking/boiling.
It works it works thriggen good awsome video mate done my boot in my car and everything else in my seized engine i use a wire brush to take crystalized rust spots outa the boot after the vinegar reacts and finished its dryed made a crystal layer east to remove
People make all kinds of concoctions and buy lots of products like Marvel Mystery Oil but nothing works as well as plain white vinegar.Its cheap and environmentally friendly.Thanks for this great video.
It really does work thanks for making this video I just did a LS1 engine and it got all the rust out of the cylinders car had been Ina flood and intake went under water
I did not rebuild it one cylinder was pitted bad and was unable to save it but I will say it didn't have any rust after this but u need to use a good vinegar I used two different kinds and the one from the dollar store that was pure worked best and all rust was gone in 2 days
Cool stuff, look up the 55 gal drum with large Bag to clean rust off these old Blocks, I will do the bag & 55 gal drum with Vinegar & let you know how it worked out. Thank you
Something else I'll toss in, if you can't get a cylinder head off, put away the hammer. Find which cylinders are at TDC, release the rocker arms so the valves are on their seats and pull the spark plug to fill with compressed air (even a bicycle pump if need be). so long as the cylinder passes leakdown, she should pop for you. you may even want to keep the head bolts on loose to keep it off the floor :)
The only thing is that you have to be careful with vinegar because not only will it remove the rust but also a few layers of the metal. I left a knife sitting in a bottle of vinegar overnight to derust it came back the next day and there was a deep line etched right where the top of the vinegar and the knife met and the knife was slightly thicker above the line below it it was now thinner all the way to the tip
Vinegar also destroys anything rubber. If your engine is this fucked to where you need to dump vinegar in it you will be replacing the rubber and lines anyway with new (you should) but just keep that in mind.
It might really be a good idea to try this on a seized engine to unseize it enough to remove the pistons or remove the pistons while not being to harsh on the rings. But if not, I just don't really see why anyone would do that... I mean, the cylinders will never be good after this... You will still need to hone them after that if you don't want to destroy the rings and/or consume a ton of oil...
This will work perfectly for my light surface rust they dont have water in them just rusting from the moisture in the air not gonna drill em out unless the rust was severe enough to eat into the metal
I use a $15 ebay hone and it does about 40 cylinders before it wears out. A must to get good crosshatching and remove pitting. If the pitting is really bad then the cylinders will need rebored.
Hey Thomas, very good idea on cleaning the engine with vingar never thought of that.. BUT UR DOING A BIG SCREW UP BY PRESSURE WASHING THE INSIDE OF THE MOTOR.. THAT INVOLVES WATER AND WATER WILL CAUSE THE RUST TO COME BACK NO BRAINER THERE!!!!! U need to use a little steel brush or Emery cloth with gasoline for that NOT MORE WATER 💦
I’ve done this to a few motors now, I clean it with vinegar multiple times pressure washing it between each bath. But I remove the pistons and all then set the whole block in a bath of vinegar over night and wash it, once I get it where I want it i use a leaf blower to dry it and I spray it over with an oil & fuel mixture. Learned it from another channel.
