Rusty Metal Fixup - Pedal Assembly and Brake Fluid Reservoir Bracket

I was watching a weekend car build/repair show and they talked about this stuff called Metal Rescue.  It's supposed to remove rust from metal parts, bringing it back down to nice metal.  This is different from the rust restorer products which convert and encapsulate the rust into a hard black compound.  I figured it was worth a try because the pedal assembly was a rusty mess.

I bought it in a gallon jug from Summit Racing.  It was significantly cheaper than buying directly from the manufacturer web site.

This is what the pedal assembly looked like at the start.  You can see how hard it would be to sand away all of the rust while assembled, or even after it's torn apart, which is hard to do since some of the parts stay on for good from the factory.

The instructions say to completely immerse the metal in the solution, so I used a 5 gallon bucket.  It wasn't converting quickly so I just left it overnight and checked it in the morning.  It's a pretty interesting product - no toxins, no VOC, water-based.  You just keep using the same solution over and over until it's totally black and won't take off any more rust.

And here's how it looked when I pulled it out.  Excellent results with just some dirt and original paint flecks!

And here is what the solution in the bucket looked like:

I then primed, painted and clear coated the assembly, so I'll be ready to reinstall it at the right time.

The next rusty thing I tried was the brake fluid reservoir bracket.  It's a small piece of shaped metal to hold the reservoir onto its bracket in the cowl area.  Here is what it looked like as it went through the process in a small paint pail.  I decided to put the whole thing into a ziplock bag to see the extent of evaporation.

It removed the rust well, leaving just a bit of original paint.

And this is what the solution looked like afterward.  Yuk!  Liquid rust.

Here's what the bracket looks like back in place after sanding, priming, painting and clearcoating.

I poured all of the solution back into the original container and it went nearly back up to its original level, and was a weak tea color so I think it still has a lot of life left in it.