Rusty crank: can it be saved?

[chadbullet]

Bought a bike that has been in the elements for some time now. The crank is RUSTY! I'm thinking I can take some vinegar and a wire brush to it to remove the rusty, but will I face any issues after that? Or can it be saved?

[geoffh]

Yeah it will be fine as long as its not damaged,its just surface stuff it won,t weaken it,clean it up and dab some rust killer on there.

Geoff

[br4inl3ss]

ofcourse. ive saved car crankshaft in a much worse stat...
just be sure the surface is scratch free and super smooth where the seals goes.
if pitted/scratched, j-b weld job and be done with it.
if j-b weld is unavailable, just use superglue but it wont last in overheating engine while j-b weld wont have any probleme with overheating engine. anyway it shouldnt overheat so should be fine.

someone told me he did the j-b weld trick on a 2broke dirt bike and it didnt last a week, so maybe 2broke are weird enought to be different, but i did that on over 10 4 stroke engine and one of them was the crankshaft on my heavily modded 360 magnum swapped dakota. 110 000km on a j-b welded crankshaft ( 110 000km after the repair but engine had near 550 000km ), beaten to death daily, still running strong on new owner hands at 620 000km. so i guess he did a very bad job. and i can understand that. sometime it wont fill a tiny hole for no appearant reason. if this happen, enlarge the hole/scratch and redo the j-b weld job.

[Lucass2T]

I would'nt touch it too much.
Rust at that part of the crank doesn't do any harm.
As long as the surface where the seal seals is still fine, leave it as is!
The variator will clear the rusty splines when it moves over it.
Use a little grease on the splines and let the variator clean the rest.

[kosmos]

i put vinegar on a crankshaft once and the seal blew air around it afterwards. ruined it. did the same to a wheel hub, measured it compared to another one afterwards laying around and there was a mm or so difference