Grimy automobile parts frustrate me.
What is the best thing to fill a parts washer with?
What is the best way to remove years of caked on grime from something like an engine block?
Is there a place were one can purchase large quantities of something similar to carb/brake parts cleaner for significantly less than $5-$6 / can?
Thanks!
This thread pertains to my interests as well.
mine has mineral spirits in it.
Original Pine-Sol makes for a pretty good cost/cleaning ratio. I don't have a parts cleaner, but it does good work soaking carbs.
mine has had kerosene in it for years.
I used to have access to a genuine steam Gennie. Not a mere pressure washer, but a real steam cleaner. Wonderfull tool. Spoiled us rotten at the shop. We'd steam clean everything before touching it.
Even a cheapie HF type pressure washer though, with some detergent, will clean a cruddy engine pretty well. Not perfectly of course, but it won't be a dripping goopy mess either.
Lacquer thinner is a wonderfull grime cutting agent. Having a metal can of this stuff around that you can drop smaller parts into and swish to sparkingly cleanliness is very nice. Low tech and cheap too.
Citrisolve, purple power and other water based cleaners, usually citrus, do a very good job of cleaning big parts. Not perfect, but pretty darn good. Good stuff for use in a cheapie water based parts cleaner. Beware of their paint stripping tendancies.
Brake cleaner is perc, same stuff dry cleaners use. Get it in a 5 gallon drum if you want lots of it.
Good ole diesel or kerosene make good generic grease cutting cleaners as well.
I've got nothing usefull to add over the other suggestions. But I do nominate this thread for best title award of the month.
Thanks for the excellent responses. I will try some of these out.
I had been using the parts washer fluid that you can get at Harbor Freight, but I have no idea what that stuff actually is, and it doesn't seem to have much efficacy.
Also, sorry for the misspelling of "noggin."
Modern parts washers use a heated water based solvent now. It actually works better then the old stuff (as long as it's heated).
That being said, I have my shops old solvent tank in my sideyard filled with the outdated solvent and diesel. Works well, just stinks
JamesMcD wrote: Also, sorry for the misspelling of "noggin."
I thought maybe that was the British spelling.
Scrape off as much gunk as possible and then use diluted Simple Green. Scrub it, use pure Simple Green, then rinse it. It works great, it's cheaper, and is biodegradable.
When I do cylinder heads... it either comes to me clean... or I bring it to a shop and charge the client for the cost....
It is so nice working on clean components
Back in the day of my fathers garage, they always had a bucket of gasoline for cleaning things. Works great. Fire department didn't like it until one of the mechanics threw a lit cigarette in it and nothing happened. They still didn't like it.
I just did an engine bay with simple green and a pressure washer. Worked like a charm.
Yeah, I have some skepticism about Simple Green and other "safe" stuff being used on greasy automotive applications. Simple Green is great for removing grime from interior parts, or taking green mossy E36 M3 off of your aluminum siding, but I haven't seen it do much to greasy engine parts.
I think I need to invest in a pressure washer. Too bad my current project is already spindle-less and up on stands inside my garage.
Trust me Simple Green works. Been using it on my friends 2002 for almost everything. Perhaps you diluted it too much. You do have to scrub a little.
I always started with gunk and a low pressure electric karcher pw hooked up to my water heater. upon removal and disassenmbly, gasoline is a cheap solvent, but mineral spirits lasts longer. for the baked on stuff like on vw engines, easy off was effective, at least before they reformulated it 20 years ago. brake clean is a quicky for little stuff dripping into rags.
With the Simple Green I sprayed it on until dripping and let it sit for 30 minutes. Then blasted it with the pressure washer. This was on a nasty, greasy '65 Plymouth Fury. I ended up blasting it twice to get all the cracks and crevices clean, but clean it is. I also used it without diluting it.
I wanted to update this thread with something I tried recently:
Oven cleaner. It's meant to remove cooked on grease right? Well I used 3 cans of it on my 626 engine block, which leaked from every possible seam and was absolutely caked in a thick greasy mess. It worked quite nice. Left it on for a while and rinsed it off with a squirt bottle full of water. Put some more on there, waited, rinsed again. Very little actual effort was involved, and the grease rinsed off on to the floor. I will be using this method again.
Just don't get this stuff on aluminum. That is a NO-NO.
You'll need to log in to post.
