ice melt

"Franklin Newton" wrote in message .net...

"Blueskies" wrote in message
...

We started getting quite a few of our pups back from European operators
with the cad plated parts very corroded. Turns
out the Europeans were using some sort of new deicer stuff on their
runways and all. Unfortunately I do not know what
it was exactly, but you can do some testing on your own parts. Get some
old screw hardware from your local mechanic
and see what happens...


That pups should be pumps, as in hydraulic.
http://www.parker.com/ag/pdf/abexbrochure.pdf in case you are
interested...


Cadmium plating is routinely stripped from the base metal using an amonium
nitrate solution, hence the corrosion.



That may be the case, and maybe ammonium nitrate was the 'new' material that was being used over there, but it the
problem was sudden and they are no longer using whatever-it-was because the problem has gone away. Almost all of the
steel components on the pumps are cad plated, as well as many of the landing gear parts. There was quite an uproar there
for a while...

I have owned airplanes for almost 30 years and I have always used regular
old Calcium Chloride from Walmart, etc. I never knew that it was forbidden.

I live in New England. The highways are salted somewhat in the winter and
at 70 mph, my car gets covered with salt and the car rusts, as everybody
knows. You don't want an old car from New England.

I don't taxi out of my hangar at 70 mph, believe it or not, so the CaCl does
not splash up on to the airplane. After 30 years, I have not noticed any
corrosion problems at all. U-m-m-m Maybe I'm just naive.

DB