Oven cleaner to strip rust and paint?

[sublimer]

Hmm, seems plausible, but I guess I'm curious if it will cause damage later on.

I'm going to refinish parts of my car. To start I was thinking of redoing the radial arms. I want to strip and clean them up, cover it in a rust protector, and then repaint them. Given the picture below, what would you suggest to clean them up...is oven cleaner worth a shot?

[jimmy828]

SAND BLASTING!! I decided to invest in a cheap sand blaster to do such small parts as you want to do.It works for me! If you don't have access to air compresser, there are vendors out there that have rust removal solutions such as Eastwood.

[72BahamaBlue]

I've used an 8" wire wheel on a bench grinder, with good results. You may need to repair the heavy rust on the ends where the bushings are, I ended up filing them down to clean metal and filling in with JB weld epoxy. Still good 14 years on.
Something to consider; the later radius arms '73 and up are steel (vs. the earlier forged) and seem less prone to deep rust and corrosion around the bushing area, and have much heavier duty lower shock mounts. I've broken a few earlier lower shock mounts after changing to gas charged heavy duty shocks.
The later arms also have the notch to locate the later sway bar end link brackets, should you want to add a factory sway bar.

If you are planning on removing the arms to refinish and or repair, start soaking those bolts that connect them to the i-beams with a good penetrating fluid well beforehand, and often!

[tmcalavy]

Oven cleaner is a good paint/crud stripper...use it a lot on old outboards that I refinish/repaint, but it is sloppy, messy and extremely caustic...gotta follow label directions to the T and wear safety gear. If you're not gonna remove the parts, I'd do with a media blaster...buy a small bead blaster rig and compressor or rent one...clean it up and use a good product like Rustoleum rust encapsulator/eliminator, then prime and paint. That's an awkward space to be applying oven cleaner and it won't affect the rust, just remove the original finish down to bare metal...you'd still have to wire wheel it to eliminate the rust.