I am thinking that I will disassemble all of the mechanisms, clean and restore them, but continue to work with the original paint as much as possible.
I mentioned before that I used oil only in the cleaning, but that has changed now.
I am using Oil on the painted surfaces, but I will be using PB blasted on the rusted bits and completely cleaning the rest.
I gave the whole unit a bath in Dawn dishwashing liquid (the blue stuff) (ONLY do this if you plan to completely disassemble a unit, otherwise it could ruin a machine) This removed the fuzzy crud and the dirt that was just not going to help the process. I used a soft nylon brush and gently scrubbed the unit clean(ish)
Before:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]391328[/ATTACH]
After
[ATTACH=CONFIG]391329[/ATTACH]
Last edited by SteveH; 01-28-2013 at 09:49 AM.