Control Column Polishing

[j3pup]

Can anyone offer advice on shining up the control columns. My newly acquired 170B has been sitting in a garage for 5 years and the control columns are a tad rusty.

[Robert Eilers]

Brasso does a good job removing rust from chrome.

[Brad Brady]

Brasso does a good job removing rust from chrome.

And once that is done....Aerokroil, (My favorite) or WD-40 on a rag and rubbing the tube every now and then...keeps the tube and fanalic holder in the dash well lubed......Brad

[j3pup]

Thanks!

[GAHorn]

If it's truly rusty...then the only real fix is to remove it and have it de-plated, polished, and re-plated and baked to remove hydrogen embrittlement. (Don't just let your auto-shop plater do this job unless they understand the hydrogen embrittlement problem. Within 30 minutes of re-plating, it must go into a 350-400-degree oven for four hours.)

[j3pup]

Going to inspect further today. It didn't look that bad, and I hope its not cause that sounds expensive.

[GAHorn]

Going to inspect further today. It didn't look that bad, and I hope its not cause that sounds expensive.

Actually, it's not too bad. I had some Stearman vertical seat-tubes done a few years ago on a buddy's plane at Dixie Plating down in Houston. Not including two-way freight, it was only $48. They even did the polishing after de-plating, prior to re-plating, and already knew about the QQ process for hydrogen. (They were the ones to first bring the subject up, to my surprise.)

[blueldr]

My control wheel tubes were rusty as hell when I bought my airplane. I simply took them out and polished them down to bright metal with emery cloth and then kept them lubed with light oil or car wax.
Cessna apparently got an "El Cheapo" plating job done on them, perhaps in Tijuana. If the plating job had been first class to start, it never would have rusted.