Scientific Experiment.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by Warthog

On warships, its the layer just above the waterline that rusts the quickest. Anything below the hull rusts a lot slower. Ask a sailor

Maybe that's down to protection though. Like the ACF rusting faster than WD40 in the experiment because there was less of it.

i think its just that the rust under the water gets washed off by the sea.

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasc.../chem00767.htm

Not a very good link I'm afraid, but it kind of confirms what I say!

And here too about half way down. http://www.marinecorrosionforum.org/explain.htm

Here are some pics taken after day 6.




As you can see, the un-protected beaker is now well and truely rusted. The steel wool is now less than half its original size, with most of it lying on the bottom of the beaker as a brown powder.

The acf-50 is starting to loose the battle with the salty water, but the wd-40 has kept the nails and steel wool looking good as new.

I'm beginning to think that i need to adapt the experiment a little to make it more realistic. The wd-40 is alot thinner than the acf-50 and hence i think it got much better coverage on the steel wool. Also as the samples have been sitting in the same beaker of water all this time, i don't think it has been a fair test of how well the sprays would adhere to the bike exposed to rain and salty road spray. Maybe i'll hammer 3 nails into a plank of wood, and spray them with salt water once a day and leave them out in the elements.

Or maybe we should just accept that wd-40 is just as good, if not better than acf-50 and save ourselves 10 quid a tin??

Well I for one am heading out right now to give my bike a good going over with lovely cheap WD40. Uneven test or not, you can't get a falsly high result can you? If it protects, it protects.

[northwind]

Originally Posted by New Leaf

Or maybe we should just accept that wd-40 is just as good, if not better than acf-50 and save ourselves 10 quid a tin??

The reason ACF50 is better than WD40 is that it lasts massively better in the real world- as in, I sprayed my bike with it last week, I'll do it again in about february, and that's it- I'll commute 5000 miles or so through winter without washing it properly once (I'll give it a very quick hose for the brakes once a week or so, generally, you can't protect brake discs and I rusted a set of Braking wavies last year), and we already have salt down on the roads- will do until march. You can get just as good protection with WD40 or FS365 but you'll need to reapply dozens of times, and wash it every time. I can't be bothered