Scooterotica

I've never done it because I can't find the stuff for sale anywhere but supposedly muriatic acid is great for dissolving aluminium but doesn't affect the nicosil. It's used for cleaning stone and concrete but nobody has heard of it in my city. I'd say alot of the damage in that barrel is smeared aluminium. I know for sure that if you find the acid anywhere you'll have to be very careful about fumes and burning off things like fingers! I honed a cylinder like yours years ago but it took so many passes to remove the aluminium that it opened up the cylinder a bit, lost a small piece of coating too. That cylinder always took alot of kicks to start but it did run.

To be fair I seized it on the way to a rally doing about 65 up a very long hill, it was being caned trying to keep up with the RBs. It was stuck solid. It was also the second T5 to go bang after a fill up. There were serious signs of overheating and lean running , the crown was also starting to erode on the piston - not quite a hole though but nearly. We chucked it in a van and then went on to the rally where we stripped it down and freed it then reassembled it. It ran on the way back but finally succumbed to an air leak and a further seizure about 60 miles from home so it went back into the van again.

Given the trouble I'm having trying to get the replacement Malossi 210 motor running properly and no scoot on the road at present I'm looking for a quick win and hoping if I can clean this up and get it running again it'll do me till I can get one of the others MOT'd and registered.

paul d wrote: ↑Fri Jul 21, 2017 9:46 am I've never done it because I can't find the stuff for sale anywhere but supposedly muriatic acid is great for dissolving aluminium but doesn't affect the nicosil. It's used for cleaning stone and concrete but nobody has heard of it in my city. I'd say alot of the damage in that barrel is smeared aluminium. I know for sure that if you find the acid anywhere you'll have to be very careful about fumes and burning off things like fingers! I honed a cylinder like yours years ago but it took so many passes to remove the aluminium that it opened up the cylinder a bit, lost a small piece of coating too. That cylinder always took alot of kicks to start but it did run.

Muriatic acid is Hydrochloric Acid also known as Spirit of Salts - I've just bought some funnily enough as I saw it recommended as a part of a mechanism to clean rusty petrol tanks in a link on the LCGB forum.

paul d wrote: ↑Fri Jul 21, 2017 9:46 am I've never done it because I can't find the stuff for sale anywhere but supposedly muriatic acid is great for dissolving aluminium but doesn't affect the nicosil. It's used for cleaning stone and concrete but nobody has heard of it in my city. I'd say alot of the damage in that barrel is smeared aluminium. I know for sure that if you find the acid anywhere you'll have to be very careful about fumes and burning off things like fingers! I honed a cylinder like yours years ago but it took so many passes to remove the aluminium that it opened up the cylinder a bit, lost a small piece of coating too. That cylinder always took alot of kicks to start but it did run.

Muriatic acid is Hydrochloric Acid also known as Spirit of Salts - I've just bought some funnily enough as I saw it recommended as a part of a mechanism to clean rusty petrol tanks in a link on the LCGB forum.

I'm really curious to hear how you get on with the acid. Best of luck with it!

I've watched a couple of videos of it being used to clean up cylinders. I'll up date you from casualty when I've tried it.

i nipped my old ts1 many years ago and it did look very silmilar to that, i just used some emery cloth and wd40 to rub out the marks, as suggested mine was aluminium from the piston that had been spread around, the emery cloth cleaned it up realy well, and it became evident to me how hard nicosil plating is, in a couple of spots a small amount of plating came off, but it ran fine for many years with a new piston.

I've used it before, cleaned up a cast iron Polini beautifully. Also used it on a lightly seized Pinasco 225 which needed some help from a wire brush... worked perfectly. Also used it to help free the rings on the same kit, far easier than other methods. But definitely outdoors only, use a mask and eye protection.

Made a start on it tonight. Soaked some blue hand towel in the acid and let it sit on the smearing. Every so often I turned it round, gave it a squeeze and a bit of a scrub with a brass wire brush. Used gloves and safety goggles and kept a big bucket of water handy.

So far I've got about 70% of it off I think. I'll go back to it tomorrow.

I can't get this thread to load on Tapatalk so you'll have to click the links if you want to see how this is going.

After last nights soak it looked like this -

https://www.flickr.com/gp/133610608@N06/4961V8

Same again tonight and I reckon it's got 90% of it off now -

https://www.flickr.com/gp/133610608@N06/250Hn5

https://www.flickr.com/gp/133610608@N06/n7e257