Restoring the batteries' basket - part #1, cleaning!

Some days ago I posted on the removal of batteries' basket and announced its cleaning and restoration for later.

Let's get back to it!! 

After washing away most of the dirty and grease out of it, here's how it looks

What a catastrophe!! 

There's rust, deeply corroded metal and at least two coatings of paint... the worst thing about the old paint is that in some places it is still keeping its adherence, but went scratched with a cutting knife I find rust underneath!! painting over will just delay new rust, but will not stop it :/

There is no way to remove all this efficiently with sandpaper or metal brush, thus I try chemical paint remover:

After letting it work for the recommend time I went car washing station and washed it all away with high pressure water jet:

a lot got off, but still not good to start treating that awful rust! 

Got back home and started scraping paint off again with a cutting knife... what a frustration... some many hard paint with rust underneath! 

As it was starting to be a pain for almost no progress, I stopped to think about a possible easier way.