Soaked carbs in simple green

I bought a spare rack a while back, pulled all the jets and have them soaking in carb cleaner. Figured I may as well soak the bodies as well. Didn't want to break the rack so was looking for something that wouldn't harm the butterfly seals and fuel rail o-rings. Read about pine sol, lemon juice, etc. and finally settled on simple green because I didn't think it would react with the aluminum or magnesium or whatever the bodies are cast from. So I let the bodies soak in a gallon of simple green for several weeks. Now the bodies are discolored to a dark grey. Guess I was wrong about it not reacting.

So... the question is what can I do now? Is there some other chemical agent I can soak them in that might return the finish to what it was?

 

Several weeks? Wow.
I soaked mine in pine-sol for 24 hours but pulled the slides because I did not want to chance those high dollar items.

Not sure anything will clean that up by soaking. You will probably have to invest in lots of elbow grease.

 

That happened to one of my carbs. I decided to just leave it alone, I want it to run before I consider cosmetics. Realistically, you might have to do something like soda-blasting.

 

+one on soda blasting. When you put the carbs in was the simple green mixed or was it just straight up.

MN

 

It was full strength. The sliders and diaphrams were out. Everything that I could take out without breaking the rack was out.

Soda blasting is an interesting idea. Any idea what that would cost? When I was looking in to having the gas tank blasted, the least expensive place I found had a minimum charge of $75. For that price, I wonder if I could buy my own blaster that would actually work. I tried a $20 piece of crap blaster gun from Harbor Freight that I tried with my air compressor, but it didn't do much on the gas tank and I just resorted to lots of elbow grease.

 

The factory paint was pretty tough. I bead blasted all of my tanks and it took awhile. But your carb bodies should clean right up. The cool thing is soda blasting does clean and you can wash them in water to dissolve any left inside.

MN

 

quick browse on google let's me know that Simple Green contains Sodium Citrate, which will as you noticed make the aluminum go blackish.
I figure my solution of acid/water was a little bit more harsh, but left a float-bowl in the solution over night (ie 8h) and during that period of time it had turn black. so weeks is WAY to long yes.

2-3H in the solution I had cleaned away most of the residue in my carbs without turning the alu black. (a good cleaning with carb-cleaner afterwards to get rid of any leftover acid)