Hammerite products

[Argie]

Hammerite used to be the best of the best when it came to stuff for repairing cars.

But no longer.

Bought a big bottle of super-duper Hammerite evil rust remover dip, kills all known rust stone dead etc etc yada yada

Should have known there was something fishy when I couldn't see an actual ingredient listed on the bottle. Foolishly assumed I was buying something akin to the good old 'naval jelly' stuff, i.e. phosphoric acid, which always used to do the job admirably within minutes

Anyways, tried it out earlier, attempting to dissolve some rust off the MR2 - absolutely effing useless. At £10 a bottle I'd have hoped for at least some kind of reaction.. but nothing nada zilch. It didn't even lighten the slightest of surface rust. Just didn't touch it at all.

Finally found out what it is by downloading the safety data sheet from a well hidden area of the hammerite website, it's basically lemon juice 

In fact if you follow the instructions and dilute the bottle to 10 litres, lemons would be a damn sight stronger

[Kendrah]

  nothing worse than swearing by a product for years to have the same thing become crap after 5 years in production

[Argie]

I got Hagesan HG rust remover at half the price yesterday, it contains phosphoric acid which is the proper stuff, all surface rust and stains now completely removed, and it's having a damn good go at the heavier rust on things underneath like the suspension droplinks & tierods etc.

Just don't get the HG stuff into any open cuts, it causes a nasty burn if it does. On unbroken skin it just stings a bit.

Phosphoric acid is in coca cola too

[NigelWaring]

In the sixties I used to swear by Eezit for freeing rusted bolts and similar, it had the smell of embrocation and never failed for me.

When I lived in UK I used to use Famel cough syrup, it was an extract of creosote and worked well for me.

Just a few years ago I tried to get both products, found eezit but when I got it back home to Australia I found that it was useless, might have well have used spit. They'd changed the formulae.

Famel cough syrup wasn't available, was told it wasn't allowed by the EU.

... and Victory Vs are now as weak as water, don't have the kick that they used to do.  I bet they've banned Beetop sauce so I'm not coming back again.

Our local ALDI was selling huge jars of pickled red cabbage last week, is it still allowed in UK?

[Argie]

You know what Nigel, I don't know from day to day what's allowed and what's not anymore round here. There's stuff in my garage cabinet that I bought new last year, that's now on the banned list!

Looks like the beetop sauce gave up the ghost in the 80's all of it's own accord;

Hazlewood Foods originated at the turn of the century as a manufacturer of sauces. Founded by brothers Arthur and William Hazlewood, with backing from their families, the company's first facility was located in Belper, in Derbyshire. The company's sauces found a ready market in the British kitchen. One Hazlewood brand in particular, Beetop Sauce, remained a company staple until well into the 1980s, when it was discontinued.

Don't think I ever got the chance to try it

[NigelWaring]

That's a shame about Beetop, best sauce ever.

I know what you mean about trying to keep up with the banned list, I found a similar insecticide in my garden shed a couple of weeks ago.  A few years ago a neighbour found he still had 245t (agent orange), which was on sale over the counter here not that long ago.

[Argie]

Got to reading around after your last post, looks like it's a byproduct of the manufacturing process that caused the biggest problems with agent orange - apparrently if you don't look after the temperature properly while you're cooking it up, you get tons of dioxin in it, which turns out to be really nasty stuff

The bit of the US government that 'looks after' the vets interests seems to have closed the door now. If you were involved in that era & are now suffering illness that's suspected of being caused by the stuff, it's tough. Nice world we live in eh