BeeJ wrote:
FWIW
I did some reading and found little advice I thought to be helpful.
So I got out the CLR and some cotton swabs and carefully dabbed.
As soon as the CLR hit the alkaline battery goo it foamed up.
I continued until the foaming stopped.
Then I rinsed with RO water and dried the equipment on a air purifier in
a room with a wall A/C unit so I had really dry air. So far so good.
The batteries were put in and the unit works!
Now that all the alkaline goo is gone, what to do about the corrosion?
In one case I just scrubbed more with the cotton swabs; they are pretty
good at scrubbing.
In another case I got out my Harbor Freight battery powered diamond tip
rotary pen and carefully de-crudded the electrical contact area. That
worked OK too but was a little rough on the surface.
But now I am wondering about use phosphoric acid on the contacts. That
will convert the corroded steel (at least) to iron phosphate
effectively stopping corrosion. But now the questions is, what are
the conductive properties of iron phosphate and will it make a
reasonable electrical contact surface? Anyone know about that? Not
just iron phosphate, but about electrical contacts made of what,
converted to whatever phosphate.
Strangely, all the electrical contacts that had goo on them were on the
removable cover and not in the deep innards of the units I am repairing.
Well, OK, there was a little goo in there but not the corrosion.
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Google MSDS for CLR and see what it is. Mild acid plus other stuff.
If I could clean it off, I might try tarn-x, acidified soapy water.
Greg