toilet bowl cleanr hydrogen chloride to clean tank

I put in about a quart and turn the tank slowly by hand the whole time for about five minutes. I than look inside to see how it is coming. If there is still rust I do it for another five minutes and check again. Once The rust is almost all gone I remove the acid and flush and with about a pint or so do it again. It is a lengthy process and now I just pay a radiator shop $65 to do it for me including sealing it.

never mix amonia with anything with chlorine (like hcl) in it cause then u get the hitler affect. chlorine gas can kill u some people call it mustard gas. my brother is a chemist and told me that the chlorine gas will burn ur lungs if u inhale it. so make sure there is no amonia and hcl mixing if u flush it i would still be very carful just in case.

I used distilled vinegar straight out of the bottle.did a good job but did start to flash surface rust.any cheisis got any good remedies for that?

camaroguy wrote:

I used distilled vinegar straight out of the bottle.did a good job but did start to flash surface rust.any cheisis got any good remedies for that?

Well, I'm not a straight up chemist, more of a biochemist, but I'll hazard a guess here. Distilled vinegar isn't ammoniacal, its acetic acid, which is very, very weak. And if you were using commercially available stuff, like from the grocery store it would only be about 6%. Strong enough to start cleaning like you said, but not so strong as have a strong reducing effect on the metal, and hold off oxidation (rusting) at all; even for the few minutes required to flush the tank and get some phosphoric acid in there to make a layer of iron phosphate. Which, as mentioned above is more durable than exposed steel, and resistant to rusting.

Using a stronger acid should help somewhat, and of course following otakars steps in that exact order is pretty much the key.
I wouldn't personally worry too much about adding baking soda etc... or any base if you are rinsing with 2 or 3 tank volumes of water following the acid wash. But, it WILL neutralize the acid faster and pose something less of a hazard to the operator. I'm pretty used to using very high molar strength acids and bases where I work, so I tend not to sweat small stuff like that.

-J