When I cleaned up the steel parts from PX274 I used the Bilt Hamber Deox powder dissolved in a dustbin of water and then painted the parts. It worked well on most of the parts, though some of the valve springs were soo heavily rusted they looked the same after sitting in the solution for a week.
The reduction gear and oxygen bottle came up well, though I’d alraedy cleared most of the rust off with a wire brush attachment for my angle grinder.
I use Deox-C too, fantastic stuff if you use it right.
The trick is to use a warm to medium hot solution. I have a stainless container which I sit on top of an oil fired range at low output. Maintain a temperature of about 50°C. You don’t want to simmer too much or boil it, then the efficiency is remarkable. You must take the parts out every hour or so and use nylon or brass brush or scotchbrite as applicable to agitate the surface.
You shouldn’t have to mechanically grind or power wire brush parts to near base metal to start with. That defeats the object! I would though suggest for really super heavy scale, on larger less fragile items, chipping lightly with a blunt cold chisel to start with, to flake off the heavier scale.
Removal of oils and grease is essential first as it won’t work otherwise. Leaves good chrome intact and very good for improving dramatically any brown and pitted chrome if originality is desired. Won’t touch still bonded paint areas, plastics or rubber either. Will strip cadmium and other lightweight oxide type coatings.
I have had very good results dunking heavily seized mixed material assemblies in the hot solution, which came apart readily without further mechanical damage afterwards. Otherwise impossible. It should remove all oxide down to pit level leaving dull grey base metal only, if you do it right.
To give you an example, if you take a 12 year old heavily scaled car brake caliper mounting frame and dunk it in at 10:00 am. You should be painting perfect grey base metal at 5:00pm
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