After couple days soaking in Evaporust, lots of rubbing with Permablue gun bluing and steel wood. Followed by Rust Prevention Magic RPM using a heat gun.
I first applied the gun bluing to areas of the leafs that wouldn?t be visible after assembly to get a method of application dialed in. Takes a lot of rubbing to get uniform color.
Probably better ways to do it such as soaking in Instablak products but i?m satisfied with how mine turned out considering a first time amateurs attempt.
Also applied RPM to straps before using them.
Thanks for sharing. One set of my leafs have been soaking about 4 days, the other partial set 3 days. I still need to push out the bushing from the driver side. I'm thinking at least one more day if not 2 to soak. Plus the 4 gallons of Evaporust is quite black so I'm wondering if I need to change it out. That's another $100 or so. Between the Evaporust, new bushings which aren't cheap, 6 clamps and 2 centering bolts, I'm approaching the cost of new leafs. But they'd need work too to make right.
A mistake I made a while back was to use rust converter on the exposed parts of the springs. If you're going to restore the springs don't do it. The parts with that stuff on it is taking forever to clean up in the Evaporust. Guess the converter really works.