VV2-55 Spring Question

[Lah Ca]

I pulled the drum out the naptha in the paint tin to have a look. Here are the results after less than 24 hours. No brushing. No rubbing. No nada. Just rinsing a couple of times in the naptha bath.

I put everything back in the naptha to let it all steep some more. It will be a bit yet before I have time and space to move on to the next phase. Despite the excellent work of the naptha, I suspect that extracting and cleaning the spring will still be messy.

[Lah Ca]

I have the spring out. It was quite mild mannered until about 60 to 75% of the way through. Then it got a bit wild, but I was prepared.

It appears to be in good condition but is heavily caked with solid clumps of graphite. I will have to clean and polish it.

spring.jpg (69.56 KiB) Viewed 693 times

I built a wooden drum/barrel retention box, which I can mount in a variety of orientations. (I think) I will be able mount a bar over part of it to help retain the spring when it goes back in. The drum/barrel is tight in the box but it can be turned with some minor effort which may help with reinserting the sping. Don't really know. I am just making it up as I go along.

Curiously, the centre spindle cannot be removed from the bushing that has been press fit into the drum. This was handy as I could pull the spidle out most of the way through a centre hole in the retention box and then clamp the spindle to help retain the drum.

[Lah Ca]

Thank you for all the replies.

I have not had much time to look at this issue at all. But today, I did.

I tried a different technique for cleaning the motor before removing the spring drum/barrel, well ... at least a technique I have not seen discussed here.

I took the motor to my mechanic whom I had to visit anyway and asked if he could put it in his parts cleaner.

He did not think that this was a good idea, but he did propose something else, spraying the motor with brake fluid from a small pump equipped plastic bottle and blowing the fluid and dissolved 1920s grease and dirt off with an air hose.

He had one of his junior mechanics do it. It took very little brake fluid and very little time, about 5 minutes.

The motor is not entirely clean only because I said it was good enough for my purposes at the point we stopped--this was being done for free and was interrupting his work on someone's car. The young mechanic would have continued if I had asked.


VV2-55.jpg

Update and correction. It was not brake fluid but rather old school (non-acetone) brake cleaner that was used.

I know this because when I took my car in for servicing, I took along the empty spring drum and the removed spring and asked for advice in cleaning off the hardened chunks of graphite.

One of the mechanics checked things over and went and got the same bottle that was used to spray the outside of the motor. I asked him what it was, and he said it was brake cleaner.

He did a test spray on some hardened patches of graphite in the drum and on the spring. They just melted.

He went and got an empty water bottle and filled it with the cleaner and gave it to me with a strict admonishment not to drink it.

He said I could probably just apply it with a brush and work at it a bit with steel wool. We shall see.

I have labeled the bottle with a felt pen.

[Lah Ca]

Well ... I did some tests on the first metre or so of the spring.

I used a small cheap plastic drywall mud spatula that I bought at a dollar store to scrape as much of the caked graphite off the spring as I could. It was effective at reducing the depth of the cake but not at cleaning up the residue.

Then, wearing nitrile gloves, I dampened a folded heavy-duty paper towel with a very small amount of the brake cleaner I was given. Wiping the spring with this, I found that the residual graphite melted off and was mostly absorbed into the paper towel.

I then used 00 steel wool to polish the spring to a near-mirror finish.

It all went very quickly and very easily.

I discovered some stamped markings in the annealed area at the end of the spring. There is the number, 17. There is the Nipper logo and some fine print which is not stamped well enough to be entirely legible. Does 17 refer to the length of the spring in feet?

There is also some very minor shallow scoring along the spring lengthwise near the middle width of the band where wear seems to have been most intense. I cannot feel the scoring with my fingers, particularly after polishing the spring, so I don't imagine that the scoring will cause any problems once the spring is lubricated back in the drum.

I now have to wait until I can free up enough space in my work area to allow for the uncoiling of the whole spring.

[Lah Ca]

It was a lovely day yesterday and after completing a variety of other tasks, more quickly than anticipated, I returned to the spring.

Using a number of wooden outdoor chairs which I placed in a row on a sundeck with lots of space between them, I gently clamped the spring to the sides of the backs of the chairs uncoiling it out to almost its full length.

I was then able to work along both sides of the spring with good visibility, adjusting the placement of the clamps and chairs as needed as I went along. The use of paper towel dampened with brake cleaner is highly effective and creates very little mess because most of the graphite gets absorbed into the paper.

The only need for the scraping of the spring seems to have been in the outermost areas of the coil. Moving towards the centre of the coil, the caked graphite is much thinner.

Hard thin residual patches of the graphite are difficult to see because they take on a metallic sheen which closely matches the colour of the spring. But during polishing of the spring with the steel wool, they are easily found, because they present greater drag as they catch on the wool. Also the spring becomes very smooth and offers little resistance between the fingers of the nitrile gloved hand, except where thin, almost invisible patches of graphite remain. Again, remaining patches can be found by feel.

Once I had finished polishing with the steel wool, I wiped the length of the spring down once more with paper towel and brake cleaner until the towel came up clean.

The only part of the spring that now remains to be cleaned and polished is the last few feet at the centre of the coil where things are tightly wound and greatly resist being uncoiled. My cleaning technique above, so very successful to this point, fails here. I need figure out how I am going to deal with this last section.

[Inigo]

For the centre tight coils, always a problem, don't force the spring to uncoil or you may risk breaking it. Just use patience, smaller tools as toothpicks, etc, to clean it. Indeed this is not so important if the rest of the springs is clean. The middle and outer sections are the ones that work most, where the largest forces and sliding movement between coils are, when winding the spring up and down.

[Lah Ca]

For the centre tight coils, always a problem, don't force the spring to uncoil or you may risk breaking it. Just use patience, smaller tools as toothpicks, etc, to clean it.

Thank you for the reply. I must confess that I was afraid the answer would be something of this nature.

Indeed this is not so important if the rest of the springs is clean. The middle and outer sections are the ones that work most, where the largest forces and sliding movement between coils are, when winding the spring up and down.

But what if I am a perfectionist?

[Inigo]

Like me. Just do it yourself... but don't be very hard!