Regular Coke/Cola as a Rust Remover

My first attempt at removing rust other than hard work scrubbing by hand involves using Coke to do the work for me. It works! Light rust can be removed rather easily using Coke but it takes a while. Heavier rust takes a long, long time but it does work some on the removal of it. There seemed to be no damage at all leaving pans in the Coke for weeks. Using Coke as a rust remover can be rather expensive so it is not something you would probably want to use all the time.

Another reason using Coke for long term rust removal is not a good idea is it goes bad! It goes real bad! Using Coke long term, it smells like the local sewerage treatment plant, so again probably not a good idea for all of your rust removal. Five days later I can still smell the old rotten Coke out in the yard at quite a distance. I figured there would be no environmental impact from dumping the solution but there seems to be a impact on air quality. I didn't want to dump it in the house because it smelled so darn bad. I'm now wondering if Diet Coke won't go bad as badly.

I'll have to try Diet Coke to see if the lack of sugar makes it last longer without the awful smell. I assuming that the brown bubbly froth which was real tough to look at was caused by the sugar in the Regular Coke. Moving the container to dump the Coke out caused the bubbles to burst and that was anything but pleasant.

More experiments to come! I'll write about them when done.