As you can see in the pics I had to replace the piece that sits on the floor, the chains had worn through it almost the full length. Because it had wore thru the channel no longer supported the diamond tread piece and it had flattened. Used that cross peen hammer in the pic and put it in the crease and struck it with another 3 lber. Took about 10 minutes to put the creases back where they were supposed to be angle wise. Also made an adapter out of a bolt to grease some of the bearings, they had an internal groove to allow it to be greased from inside.
So I got some more stuff done over the holidays. Cleaned up and painted the main carrier or whatever it is called also cleaned up and painted the roller frame on top of the cylinders and the roller frame that goes on top. Spent one complete day dealing with bearings. Put 2 new small bearings on each of the carrier's and greased the rest of them. The big bearingsiI actually drilled a tiny hole in the shield and pumped more grease into them (if they were high speed bearings I wouldn't dare to it). But these are extremely slow moving. The rest of the parts I took to town to get sand blasted, I'm getting mighty tired of wire wheeling. So when I get them back and painted it will be assembly time.
Soo, I forgot a out that whole freezing water thing. Not really a great combo.
Its just tap water and sodium carbonate (Arm and hammer wahing soda and rebar is what I use). And the hotter the water the better it works. You could do a small heater in the water so it bearly warms it to 100* or so. 200* works faster, but not needed. As long as its not ice It will work, just slower.
Lots of ways to do it.
I helped a guy dig a pit and line plastic to do an 33 plymouth body once. Used a 400d welder to power it.
Went from junky to amazing in 24 hours.
Looks great for rust. I don't have much rust to deal with , the original paint didn't adhere real good and it looked like someone tried to spruce it up at sometime by spraying it with grey primer without much prep. The gray was mostly falling off in big chunks but stuck pretty good in other places.
Started assembling today ,used my cherry picker in the back of my truck to put the center carrier in. Got looking thru my chain stuff and it looks like I'm short a master link.
as long as it will lift my truck is all I really care about. spent all day cleaning up one of the chains. was worse than I thought about 5' of it was rusty and stiff