So I figured I'd give it a whirl. The instructions say you're supposed to rinse it off after its dwell time (5-10 minutes), so i made one spray bottle with water and one with Dr. X. They also suggested that you can dry it off with a hair dryer (they said not to use compressed air because it might contain oil).
So for my first test, I chose a fairly heavily rust chunk of diamond plate that's been sitting around in my garage for many years. The first squirts didn't make any visible difference. The instructions say that after the 5-10 minute dwell, try again if needed. I squirted the top middle section of this plate 3 times, and waited 10 minutes after each try, then I rinsed water and dried with the hair dryer. I could sorta kinda see a little difference, but nothing like what I was expecting from what i read upthread here. Well, maybe it was too heavily rusted?
So I thought I'd try something easier with only a light coating of rust. I chose the bearing cap of one of the bearings of the swing-out on my 60. The first picture is before I started. Then each subsequent picture is after an application of Dr. X and waiting 10 minutes. Bear in mind that most all chemical reactions are affected by temperature. This was all done in my heated, room-temperature garage. Speaking of chemical reactions, I got the distinct odor of sulfur dioxide as the stuff was reacting, so we can probably assume sulfuric acid is in the formulation. Honestly, the appearance (kind of a brown, translucent coffee color) reminded me of the stuff we used to passivate stainless steel with, which contained both sulfuric and phosphoric acid, along with inhibitors.
So while it isn't total snake-oil, it certainly isn't some magic-miracle process either! IOW, don't toss your wirewheels, 3M abrasive wheels, sandblaster and sanders out quite yet!
