Corroded Pickup Cover

[Jeff Callahan]

Any ideas how to clean this? It's off a 65 L5 so I'm being careful as possible.

Thanks, Jeff

[Spence]

The best way is to remove the cover and put it in an ultra sonic bath.

[Rosewood]

you could probaby sell it on ebay for $400

[Possum]

You might try TarnX, any grocery store or RiteAid type store sells it. It reverses oxidation on most nonferrous metals. Try at your own risk though, personally that look is hard to get in doing relic treatments, it usually falls off.....

[flyneye]

I'd read a thread on a forum recently about removing corrosion from plated items by mixing a bath of washing (baking) soda, making the piece in question the anode, a piece of mild steel as cathode and applying current via a car battery charger. This would work, but I suggest searching for more in depth instruction..

[Spence]

That will strip the gold straight away.

I would suggest a mild caustic solution.

[flyneye]

First it will strip the corrosion, don't leave it in long enough to strip gold. This trick is used by auto restorers to jewelry restorers and well worth looking into.

[flyneye]

Strike that ,I ran across the tutorial (Not sure about rules about linking to other forums so I will err on the side of safety and just give you the long and short. It actually hit me that one of my high school science teachers did the same thing) .
This is simple enough, shop safety measures apply. You need to mix 1 tbs arm and hammer WASHING soda per gallon of water in a suitably sized plastic tub for the project at hand.
To a battery charger with a 2 amp setting attach the part to the NEGATIVElead and to the positive lead attach a bit of 16 ga. mild steel plate with no coating.
Do not touch the part to the plate obviously, this will ruin things and be dangerous and that sort of stuff.
Run at 2 amps and check back in a couple hours were his instructions . He did his tutorial with corroded automotive chrome on a luthiers forum to address the same need as this thread. I personally would check every 15 minutes or so for results on small parts.
This will NOT REMOVE PLATING but since you have corrosion be prepared to see no chrome where the crud was.
This will, however, remove corrosion and paint.
You could affordably replate the missing areas or even the whole thing with a kit over at Plating Kits Chrome Plating Kits Aluminum Anodizing Kits Electroplating Kits - Caswell Inc. Hopefully that doesn't conflict with forum rules.

[Possum]

I think you're all making this too complicated. The green stuff is human salty dried sweat with nickel in the salt. Just soak it in water and use a scrub pad and lightly clean it off..... Doing electrical stuff is like to give you results you didn't want, you can't really predict what will happen with an old nickel plating, you might turn it all dark or something nasty you can't undo...

[JGundry]

The corrosion might be from a degrading pickguard. I saw this happen on an old Casino.