1992 Peugeot 405 SRi Restoration

I have been poking around the passengers side inner wing. Things are looking a little crusty in places.



I peeled back the very sound looking underseal to reveal the following.


Brake pipe bracket looks nasty


Place where the subframe bolts on. Looks like several panels come together at this point. Things look like they have distorted slightly due to swelling from the corrosion.


I had a poke about the underseal on the suspension turret. Did not take long to find rust. Prior to removal the seam sealer looked absolutely fine. This gets me worried enough to want to remove more to see the extent.


Closer view


From underneath.


Started pulling the stonechip and sealer off to see what I was working with. Looks like the panels themselves are largely sound, but there is corrosion where the panels join.


This was hard work so I enlisted the help of a heat gun. Great bit of kit.


The bits in the corners seemed to be quite localised. They did not extend far before I located clean steel.


Bit more work on the wing. Getting bake to bare metal in a few areas now.


Some horrible looking corrosion on the wing stiffener. Thankfully it looks much worse than it is. Mostly surface pitting only.


I popped some Deox Gel on it. Never used this before but heard good things.




After 24 hrs its turned black which means its finished.


Took the worst of it off.


Sprayed some zinc primer to keep it from rusting again.


More heat gun - Stonechip removal. What was quite interesting here was that it fell off in big chunks. There did not seem to be much panel adhesion. Thankfully this has not resulted in any corrosion. I guess despite the poor adhesion the protection was offered by the surrounding material.


Crustyness in the corner bewteen some panel joins. Again not severe.


Nice and clean at these panel joins for the most part, with the exception of one area in the middle of the photo.


Where the arch is joined to the inner wing there is some corrosion. Not severe.


Getting somewhere now. Its getting more awkward as you go up the arch.


Nice clean steel for the most part.


I used some Hydrate 80 on the seams.


More Hydrate 80


Used a bit more Deox Gel


Into the suspension turret now. This is a pain in the neck!


Some bit I had cleaned at teh front started to show some light surface rust. I cleaned off again and applied some zinc primer. The front of the car gets the weather with the garage door open so this will do for now.


Getting there - Note corrosion on the bottom of the panel i think will need chopped out and welded along with the brake pipe bracket. I cannot weld so I need to either learn or get someone to help me.


Top of the turret. Almost all of the stonechip is removed. There is some light pitting where the strut bolts on. Looks like there may be some more under the remaining paint which is really hard to get off due to the angle I need to get at to reach it. This would have been easier on a ramp or on a spit of which I have neither.


Turret as bare as I can get it. Looks pretty cood condition v=bar the light pitting


Worst of the pitting in the turret.


Deox Gel applied.


A bit more Deox Gel.

I need to let this all go off, wash it off and see if in needs another coat. I think it will do.

That's this thread completely up to date (or the first time ever) with the last of the photos being from the afternoon.

Until next time.

Yes that's right. deox takes it away and hydrate encapsulates what's left to stop it getting worse.

very thorough work there...now I really understand the value of taking that extra metal treatment step...looks great.

JP

I appreciate the kind words. I am already on the Facebook group. I'll make sure and update progress there too when I get round to this again.

Nice to see this resto still going. I'd previously read this thread as a fan of 90's pugs and thought it had gone a bit quiet. Keep up the good work!

For some time I have been trying to decide which way to go regards cleaning up of all the parts I have removed so far. I have been using a toothbrush and some Bilt Hamber Surfex HD which has been good but very time consuming. I thought about buying a parts washer but I am somewhat limited on space. Some research led to to purchase of an ultrasonic cleaner. Bought it from ebay for around £100.


Fresh out of the box.


In the garage. Its meant to be a 10 litre unit however I have found that it only holds about 6 litres. It should be big enough fot most things I fancy using it for though. As a trial I dug out an old and crusty looking thermostat to see what it would do. I just used water for this first test.


Crusty Thermostat


Crusty Thermostat pt 2


Apparently you need to turn it on empty for 5 mins to de-gas the water. I used tapwater in this case but apparently you get better results with de-ionized water. You can just about see the distorsion on the waters surface and bubbles being liberated from the water.


In it goes




Results. Definitely lifted off the water corrosion products and the brass is much more visible, Did not shift the green copper? corrosion. This was in for 5 minutes. Definitely made a difference though. On to some proper stuff.


This is the water box from the rear of the engine. Its covered in oily dirty on the outside and the inside is water corrosion products. I could buy a new one of these but I wanted to see if this was recoverable?


More detail.


In it goes. You could see a cloud coming off it straight away as the machine was turned on.


Results - Pretty impressed with this. It needed a wee wipe when it came out but it had made a considerable difference both inside and out. Some minor corrosion still visible on the fixing holes - I'll deal with that later.. This was in for 30 mins @ 50 degrees C. Used some Surfex HD as the cleaner in this case.


Finished article. I am pretty pleased with this.

I am looking forward to trying this out on some more things.

My next toy is an electroplating kit. I have went back and forward about paying for plating to be done but I decided its something I would like to learn how to do. It will be cheaper overall and less risk of loosing something important. I have been very impressed by the results that I have seen from some others at home. I bought the ultimate zinc / nickel plating kit from gateros plating, It was £129. I have a power supply left over from a previous project I can use.


Kit as it arrived.

At the time of writing I have not yet unpacked this. A friend of mine has done plating in the past and it seems something you need several hours to set up in the first instance. I need to wait till I have a day in the house without the wife and kids around and i'll give it a go.

James

That's some good tips. Thanks very much. I'll give them a go. I have some brass bits to do from my throttle body so I'll give this a go.

I have had a little free time this week so I had a go at setting up the plating kit.

I bought the Ultimate Zinc/Nickel Plating kit plus power supply from Gateros Plating. The kit was £130 ish and has comprehensive instructions enclosed. Here is what was supplied:



Firstly I needed to make some space for all the tanks.



Then I laid out the contents and confirmed I had everything I should have.


Everything as supplied


The Zinc and Nickel Anodes


Bubbler, Pump, Heater and Power Supply at the back.


The Chemicals as supplied. Some nasty stuff in there.


Very important PPE!

I had to make a 'Tank Bar' in order to hand everything from. Most people use a copper bar with flattened ends. I did not have any copper and I did not want to buy a large roll for only a short length. I did however have some steel U shapped metal left over from some shelving. I cut some slots in it and grinded off the powder coat. I had decided to use an old paint container (cleaned) as my plating tank.


My Tank Bar getting its trial fit.



I saw a post somewhere about plating multiple small parts at once. I found these pea stem holder things at the local garden centre. I figured I could modify them to hold multiple strands of parts at once. Initially I thought about bolting them to the tank bar but later realised if I did this I would not be able to plate any more without removing the bar of making more whilst parts dried. I may rethink this.

I mixed up the chemicals using warm water making sure to be wearing my PPE.

I started my by plating my tank bar. As I had removed the powder coat I needed to protect it from corrosion anyway. I started by popping it in a bath of Alkaline Cleaner for a few minutes followed by a tapwater rinse. This was followed by a further short period in an acid bath again followed by a tapwater rinse.


In the plating tank. It took me a wee while to get the right current. Initially the plate was a dark grey suggesting too high a current. I dropped this a bit and the plate went to a bright zinc. I plated for about 25 minutes.


Plating results. Clearly I could only fit half the bar in the tank. This however gives a nice comparison. Plating on the right obviously. I followed this with a dip in the yellow passivate.


The resulting yellow passivate finish. I did the other side immediately afterwards.



It turned out reasonably well. There was an odd black stain where the water surface is. Not sure what this is?

I thought I would give an actual car part a go. I chose a bracket to start off with. I had already cleaned this in my ultrasound bath so it was pretty clean. Had a wee bit surface corrosion present.



Part pre cleaning. Not you can make out a little of the original finish on the part still.


Back side.


Acid dipping.


In the plating tank. You could see the surface change after just a few minutes.


Post plating. Really nice bright finish.


Back of the part. Looks good. Possibly a small bit of corrosion remaining that I missed pre plating. We can see how this is after passivation.


Post yellow passivation. Finish is good but a little uniform yellow. As I understand the colours will bloom after it has dried for a bit. I will leave until tomorrow and see what it looks like.

That's all for today.

James

As above great tutorial, cheers