Anyone tried Vactan?

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Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby mazzo » Sat Jun 14, 2014 10:08 pm

Trying to deal with some rust. Quite heavy corrosion, not surface stuff. Saw this on ebay and wondered if it's any good.

Has anyone tried it? If not, what would you use?
1971 1600 HC DeLuxe
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1978 Red 4 door Viva E from new
1969 HB 1159 4 door SL
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Re: Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby psl » Sat Jun 14, 2014 10:23 pm

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Re: Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby mazzo » Sun Jun 15, 2014 5:52 pm

Cheers Paul. Shame they didn't test Vactan. Saw a review on another classic car site which was OK but don't know how independent it is.
1971 1600 HC DeLuxe
1971 Green 2 door HC Base model
1978 Red 4 door Viva E from new
1969 HB 1159 4 door SL
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Re: Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby droopsnoot » Tue Jun 17, 2014 10:21 am

There's a guy on the DSG forum who mentioned that he's used it. All he said was "After cleaning up the rest of the section between the chassis rails and making sure it was solid i treated it with a rust prohibitor called Vactan. I used this before on my Manta project and works very well"

I guess it depends on what you mean by "quite heavy corrosion, not surface stuff" - rust treatments tend to treat the surface and maybe a little bit below that. I've used Kurust and Jenolite, and back in the days when I'd just paint it on top of quickly-cleaned rust, you didn't have to scrape down very far to find that it's still orange rust underneath. I think you've really got to get as much corrosion off as you possibly can, at which point you'll either have to replace the steel if it's gone too thin, or you'll have surface corrosion (or clean metal) that you can deal with using whatever you feel is good.

I've got a lot of rusty pits on the roof of my car that I'm trying to clean out, and I've been using phosphoric acid, sold for hydroponics as a product called "ph Down". You can either dilute it and soak parts in it, or I've been painting it onto the rusty pitted areas to clean back to clean metal. After a bit of agitation I'm getting some good results, and it's not terribly expensive either. Citric acid is another option, sold on ebay for not much money, diluted to a 10% solution. It's hard to get it to a state where you can paint it on (especially to a vertical surface) as it's quite runny, but I've heard of people mixing it with wallpaper paste to make a gel with good results.
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Re: Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby fistfullofV5's » Tue Jun 17, 2014 12:50 pm

The products I've used and had excellent results with are Bilt Hamber Deox C , Deox Gel and a product called ACF50. The Deox doesn't convert rust,it removes it. ACF50 comes from the aviation industry but is widely used in the motorcycle world. Both of these are very effective on parts you can remove such as suspension bits etc. If you're facing heavy corrosion in the bodyshell though I'd be reaching for the angle grinder and welder as a longer term fix.
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Re: Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby droopsnoot » Tue Jun 17, 2014 6:08 pm

I believe (but have no proper evidence) the Deox C product is actually packaged citric acid at a higher price. Both come as small white grains that are dissolved in water, and both act in a very similar manner when you put a piece in to soak - bubbles coming off the workpiece. I doubt BH would ever say so of course. I've used Deox-C and it worked well, I just switched to citric because of the cost - I have lots of rusty things to do.

If you can get stuff off the car to stick it in a suitable container, electrolytic rust removal is a nice cheap way to clean rust off. Just need a battery charger, a big piece of steel to act as the electrode, some water and some washing soda. Connect it all up, switch on, and you'll be able to watch the rust being cleaned off the workpiece. I've currently got an old bath sat in my garage, as soon as I can find a plug for it I'll be trying to clean off some front wings.
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Re: Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby mazzo » Tue Jun 17, 2014 6:57 pm

Thank you - that's really helpful.

The rust is minor, mostly surface with the occasional hole. The biggest problem is a series of holes along the flat surface around the fusebox. It's just rusted through and was concealed by the sealant. I only noticed it because I was wondering where the water was coming into the driver's footwell.



Since the photo, I've been a bit ruthless with the metal, grinding out the majority of the mess and intend to plate it from inside so that I can put a skim of filler on top and make it look original. So I wanted to eliminate any chances of it coming back and at the same time treat some other areas.

The heater cowling is rusted away in one point too, so I will try to repair that with some fresh metal.

Thanks again
1971 1600 HC DeLuxe
1971 Green 2 door HC Base model
1978 Red 4 door Viva E from new
1969 HB 1159 4 door SL
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Re: Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby droopsnoot » Wed Jun 18, 2014 10:07 am

Mine looked like that - as you will probably have found by now, once you start grinding that you'll find a series of holes if not one big one, so no rust converter is going to help, other than the combined "new steel and MIG welder" type of rust converter that Dave mentioned.

The water can sit on that horizontal bit, which of course leads to it starting to work its way through the metal if there are any small unpainted areas. I made the cover mounting flange for mine, could do another one at a reasonable cost if it helps, though postage would probably make it silly. That said, the flange might clean up.

That's an interesting plate on the bottom left of the photo held on with what looks like a screw, what does that do? Mine is just flat steel there, the only non-flat bit (other than the pressing shape) is for the fuse box.
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Re: Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby fistfullofV5's » Wed Jun 18, 2014 5:29 pm

I'm also curious about that plate. Similarly mines also flat steel there.
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Re: Anyone tried Vactan?

Postby mazzo » Wed Jun 18, 2014 9:35 pm

Thanks again.

The mystery plate is the alarm siren mounting. It was the simplest of places to mount it and was far enough away from the front of the car that you couldn't get to it from underneath or the wings. Also it gets less crud on it up there.

Thanks for the offer of the plate. It actually didn't increase too much in size so I was lucky. I was almost tempted to fill the holes with weld but it's going to be easier to just plate it. Cosmetically, doing it from the inside is good but difficult. May end up doing it from the top by cutting out a much bigger hole, putting a hole shapped plate in and trying to grind it flat once it's seam welded. Dunno yet, I will see how "competent" I feel.
1971 1600 HC DeLuxe
1971 Green 2 door HC Base model
1978 Red 4 door Viva E from new
1969 HB 1159 4 door SL
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