Aged Legos

[lagrenouille7]

Hello Everyone,

I have a Problem that I hope someone can help me.

First let me say that I live in Indonesia and have collected legos since I was 3 - 5 years old, now I'm 23 and still enjoying to play with them but I have encountered a few problems.

1. oily , Greasy tires, I don't know if anyone else has this problem but my small lego tires have harden and are sticky as if they have been rolled in sugar then let to dry . I have tried to wash them in hot water with soap and I let them sit in the water over night. if anyone can recommend a different solution , great .

2. yellowed white bricks, I'm sure many of you know this, yellowed white bricks I have heard to use peroxide but my problem is I live in Indonesia and peroxide is only available in 100% not 3% or .99%. so I dont know the mixing levels with water and peroxide . if some can tell me how much peroxide for 1 liter or 2 , cause I've got thousands of white pieces all affected . 

3. also with the white pieces can I do colors like light grey and blue ?

 

thx I hope someone can help me

[Robianco]

Hi,

I can't help you with the greasy tires unfortunately.

With the use of 100% hydrogen peroxide if you wanted it to be 4% or equivalent wouldn't you mix 40ml of peroxide with 1litre of water? or am I being over simple in that estimation? There's an estimated chart here: http://www.using-hydrogen-peroxide.com/peroxide-dilution-chart.html

I've seen people use other coloured bricks before now but with differing results It's not as clearly effective as with white bricks. Someone on Youtube called Toy Polloi did a video with various colours of bricks: 

 

[Criosphynx]

I have also encountered the sticky tires and would love to hear a solution.

[Poppy2612]

I have heard if you use an active oxygen component (like vanish oxi-action) with the peroxide it improves the results. Also uv light is needed to make it work correctly - effectively the problem is resolved by that which caused it 

[lagrenouille7]

Ok cool thx Robianco and Poppy2612, I will try that experiment with what I can find in this bloody country.

To Criosphynx after I posted this question I tried to clean the tires. 

I put them in a bucket of hot water n some soap let it sit over night.

next day I took them out to dry with a hairdryer and with a pencil I was able to separate most of them.

then I took the rim n put in hot water again with soap n the tires I put outside in the sun to dry more . 

This sort of work I was able to clean the rims not sticky but the tires however are still a bit sticky but not hard like a rock like before . 

The heat from the hair dryer made the tires soft so that they could be free from the rim . However I did break the rubber maybe 10 or more tires out of 60 so its not bad . I'm mostly focus on star wars and the creator buildings. 

[1980-Something-Space-Guy]

On 10/17/2016 at 0:06 PM, Robianco said:

With the use of 100% hydrogen peroxide if you wanted it to be 4% or equivalent wouldn't you mix 40ml of peroxide with 1litre of water? or am I being over simple in that estimation? There's an estimated chart here: http://www.using-hydrogen-peroxide.com/peroxide-dilution-chart.html

According to this document, it would be 960 ml of water and 40 ml of peroxide. In other words, x% peroxide means x% of the solution (in terms of volume) is peroxide.

[Andy D]

This thread reminds me of a thread discussing using Oxy Clean and Peroxide and other methods to de-yellow LEGO. I have misplaced he URL and I can't seem to enter the proper s arch t Rams to find it again.

Would someone with the info please post either the URL or the document describing e process? I think that would really help this discussion.

Thanks,

AndyD