Treating rusty fasteners with vinegar

I've heard that vinegar works as a rust treatment.

I recently replaced my hitch fasteners, and afterward it struck me to test the vinegar idea on the very rusty old bolts, washers and nuts.

Here are the results.


I don't know if a particular kind of vinegar is supposed to work better. I just grabbed what was in the food pantry.


Bolts in the vinegar. I noticed there was more room, so I dropped a few more in later.


I then went out of town for a three-day weekend. This is what was waiting for me Monday evening.


I put the bolts in a bucket to rinse them off.


I rinsed them a few times. This probably would have worked a lot better if I had used my wife's spaghetti strainer. The suds are from soap residue left in the bucket. I didn't add any soap.


Here are the rinsed off fasteners.

Nice pics and a good tip. I've tried this too and it
works really well. Leaves a nice black oxide finish
on the bolts.

Molasses works too, but you have to leave it longer
and bears tend to chase the vehicle afterwards.

Holy crap... I have some old hardware that I'm going to do this too...

very cool!

On a side note, I drink a little Braggs apple cider vinegar everyday, helps alot with indigestion problems!

Thanks. I'm not advocating for or against this as a preferred method, necessarily. There are other ways to treat rust. I certainly haven't tested all of them. This is the first time I've tried vinegar.

However, this vinegar treatment seems to remove it in most places, which is probably best for a fastener, rather than something like phosphoric acid (which I've recently used on my underbody) that converts the rust.

Plus, it's a heck of a lot cheaper than the $28 I spent on a bottle, albeit a large one, of phosphoric acid.

It's also easy to just drop your old rusty nuts and bolts (we all probably have plenty of those around) into a jar of vinegar and leave it for a few days. It might not be quick, but it certainly is easy...

It's called "douching your fasteners".

I use muratic acid. Just make sure and neutralize it when you are done.

I always though "rusty nuts" was an old man's affliction.

Just a quick followup. I soaked the same fasteners again, this time for about four or five days.

Although some additional rust came off, it wasn't much. This leads me to think there are diminishing returns to vinegar after a couple days.

joe_peters said:

I always though "rusty nuts" was an old man's affliction.

Click to expand...

See your future young Jeti :jester:

Interesting kitchen trick for those who have time for that. I've seen the same thing said about COKE(R). Never waited long enough I guess.

I use a wire wheel if I want to de-crust something fast. Works wonders on threads and makes assembly a breeze.