A little advice please
 

So, long story short, my garage needs a lot of work to be a dry hibernation spot for my S. After our last snow storm a drift of snow formed inside my garage from a gap in my old misaligned overhead door. After the big warm-up this past weekend, that drift melted into condensation which clung to the underside of my S, everywhere on the body that wasn't covered by the car cover and even under the hood! Nothing else in my garage was wet (at least no more damp than usual) even my hard top on it's stand about 5 ft from the car didn't have any condensation on it. After I got done lamenting over this wretched turn of events and wiping up as much water off the body and engine bay that I could, I pondered over what I should do with this:

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.s2k...73385d6f81.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.s2k...5b1b21bd14.jpg

Sorry such dark/crappy photos, but that is my idler pulley with a layer of surface rust all over it. The advice I am seeking is what should I do about this? Remove it and try to clean the rust off? Just start it up in the spring and let the belt wear it off?
I'm just not used to this, when I lived in NY before my garage was in the lower part of my house (heated and dry) and when I lived in California it was, well, dry.

Just leave it.

You can probably clean the rust off with phosphoric acid (Eastwood's Fast Etch), but that will most likely leave an uneven, blotchy silvery coating on the pulley. I use WD-40 on a lot of bare metal parts to avoid flash rust (spray it on and wipe it off) but I'm not sure how wise that would be for the pulley. Maybe do that for now and then "wash off" with brake cleaner come spring.

I suspect that will come right off when you start driving it next month. I wouldn't do anything unless it doesn't disappear after a week or two of driving.

I had a similar thing happen to me last week. I went out to my shop Monday when it was almost 70°. The garage was chilly so I opened the overhead door. Big mistake! Within seconds everything was drenched in condensation. I ended up pulling the covers off the cars and motorcycle, opening all the drawers in the tool box and setting up two box fans overnight to dry things out.

That's what I was thinking:shrug:
Levi

Cars get wet all of the time with few ill effects.

Only problem is if they sit in condensation for long periods of time. Don't store vehicles on a lawn for long periods of time.

We've got some nice days coming, Open the garage door, pop the hood and let some air in there

As others mentioned, don't worry about it. Happened to my car as well. Doesn't look pretty, but also won't affect anything. You'll forget all about it once you have the car out and engine bouncing off the redline :drive:

Thanks everybody. Yeah, it is all dry now. The back section of my garage has a wood floor with a 'pond' underneath it. The pass door is back there also, and the 'pond' is visible right in front of the door, which locks the door shut in freezing temperatures :banghead: On top of that the overhead door has no remote opener, so I'm not getting to the car at all. I was worried that all that condensation had been sitting on the car for a longer period than just after the snow drift incident. As you can see I have multiple dampness issues I need to address!