Spar box corrosion

[bryris]

A friend of mine reached out to me this weekend with the bad news that his annual turned up some pretty serious corrosion inside of the spar box. This is a 1970 PA28-140. From the looks of it, around the attachment point for the bottom part of the spar, there is a good bit of corrosion. A cursory glance didn't reveal much, but the mechanic, this time, tried to "peel" some of the aluminum with a finger nail and it started coming off in thin sheets. At this point, they don't know whether the spars themselves are toast or whether it's just the spar box. Talking at least 10k to replace the spar box, more if the spars are bad. I feel bad for him. Picture of his corrosion:

But, of course, it got me to thinking about my airplane. As soon as I got the news, I went out to my own hangar and pulled back my carpet for a fresh look. I took a bunch of pictures, sent to my A&P, and have basically reaffirmed myself at this point that my bird is OK. I sprayed a fresh dose of corrosion X all in there before zipping everything back up. But, it got me to thinking about how to clean in there. It's pretty dirty. My OCD side would like to see it spotless in there. The entire spar box clean and glistening. But, I understand the concept of "killing it with kindness" and don't want to introduce a problem that, at present, doesn't exist. Below are the pictures I took of MY airplane. Should I try to clean this up with a nylon brush and some solvent (is there a better way?) or do you suppose just keeping a layer of corrosion X on it (which will attract and hold onto dirt, it seems) and running a vacuum in there from time to time is all it needs?

 

[skymark]

 

[bovine]

 

[reb]

 

[bryris]

 

[jruhnke]

 

[N4986P]

 

[Tweety]

 

[flyingtigerrpj]

 

[bryris]