Chad and I were walking through the 2011 SEMA show and came upon the booth for a product called Evapo-Rust that seemed too good to be true. We talked to the folks in the booth and told them that we’d love to try the stuff for ourselves to see if it actually did what they claimed. Chad and I both gave our information and we were promised a sample of the product to try. Low and behold a couple weeks later a gallon of Evapo-Rust arrived on both of our front porches within a day or one another.
Living here in New England, rust is a part of gearhead life, and frankly it sucks. If it isn’t caustic road chemicals, it is horrible weather, salt water, acid rain, and any number of other factors that naturally (or unnaturally) eat metal at worst and ugly it up at best.
The product directions are more complicated than this, but here’s the short version. Pour Evapo-Rust into a container of some sort. Place rusty object into Evapo-Rust. Let it stew for a while, shorter for less rust, longer for more. Pull it out, wash it off and be amazed. Could it really be that easy? Does this stuff actually work? Read on to find out.
Our test subject was a set of pliers that I had thought were lost to the tool gods. As it turns out, they were not lost, just stolen by one of my boys and buried in wet sand for weeks. They were totally jacked up and frozen solid. If there was not a jug of Evapo-Rust sitting on my work bench, they would have shamefully gone into the scrap pile.
Here’s how it went down —
The product is odorless and non-toxic. It just REALLY hates rust apparently. I stuck my schnoz right into the bottle and there was no discernable odor.
Here’s what the unused product looks like –
Here are the pliers that I was trying to save –
I simply dunked them into the Evapo-Rust and let them sit in the liquid over night. Here’s what it looked like in the morning.
So did it work? Did the pliers shed the rust and free up? You bet they did. Check out the difference!
So did Evapo-Rust work? Hell yes it did, just as advertised. This product is 100% BangShift approved!
Hmmm….
Do they offer it in a container big enough to submerse a 1969 Plymouth Road Runner?
hmmm wounder if i could get a eniugh to fill a swimming pool and dunk my 99 GTP in the stuff
Well, there are plenty of ways to get rid of rust, but this one seems easy and non hazardous.
as a media blaster i get requests to blast stuff and leave paint marks, stenciled pt#’s ect. even with the gentle stuff its nearly impossible, this stuff works exactly like its advertised to do and would not even think of trying another product.
Cool!
I’ve used that stuff a few times and been pretty impressed. It works even faster if you keep it moving be occasionally shaking the container or using a small aquarium pump. I’ve even seen people use the pumps to circulate this stuff over larger parts that are too big to soak(like sheet metal).
If the rust is bad enough that it has spalled up into 3 dimensional chunks this stuff won’t break those down. But otherwise it does a pretty impressive job.
One of the fresh air vents for my ’62 comet was rusted shut, and I coudn’t force it open or I’d tear the fibreboard housing. I soaked the thing face down in a 1/2″ deep dish of this stuff overnight and the vent came out looking new and the latch & hinge worked perfectly.
Hot Rod did a really good comparo article on the top rust removers from the gels to the liquids and everything else. Worth finding.
If you need to soak large items, make your own: 7 parts water 2 parts sulfated molasses (kind you’d get from a farm co-op store) and 1 part apple cider vineger. Throw it in a 55 gallon drum, mix thoroughly, and hang the parts in the drum over night. Rinse with water, repeat.