Rust on Baffles - Harman Hydroflex 60 Boiler

Hi.
Last year we bought a Harman Hydroflex 60 Boiler. Today we went to turn it and were surprised to see a bunch of rust on the swirly baffles.
Should the rust be removed or is it ok to run it like that? Does it hurt the efficiency of the boiler to have rust on the baffles?
If we should remove the rust can we just use steel wool or do we need to paint them after removing the rust?
We did look in the manual but it doesn't say anything about removing the rust. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Probably wouldn't hurt to clean it up, ash and rust can act as insulators, so it will reduce the efficiency a bit.

you should always clean the stoves/boilers out after each heating season and coat stuff with a rust preventative, LPS3 or equal. that will help in minimizing the rust.

Ok, thanks. I was worried that I would make it worse by using the steel wool to remove the rust.
I thought I read somewhere that if I removed rust from something I had to paint it within 24 hours or rust would come back.

If you keep it dried out, it wont' rust as much, once you clean it, fire up the stove, it will keep it dried out. It rusts when there is moisture (humidity) in the air.

I'm going to reiterate what WNY said--after cleaning rust off--make SURE you dose it with some kind of preventive spray! This will also combat moisture.

Thank you.

don't bother

put them back in == products of combustion will loosen the worst an it will fall out when you punch the fire tubes

Keeping the "swilies" (steel wool) clean isn't necessary - they are intended to slow and break up combustion gas flow - dirty is better

now -- the fire tubes and vessel surfaces -- that's a different story