Technical Parts cleaner solvent

New dilemma..Bunch of years ago I refilled my parts washer with new solvent, NXTOM parts cleaner best I can tell from price tag from Autozone...Washes off with water..Needing a refill I went to Autozone and got:
Clean-Rite Purple Power Industrial Strength Cleaner/Degreaser

Since the Purple Power is also washed off with water and can be mixed with water for less strength can I mix the two? Sorry for big type!

 

Don't know for sure about mixing with water but don't use it on aluminum.

 

Referencing the MSDS for both is a good place to start. Manufacturers don't always list the specific ingredients
(proprietary) however they have to state reactivity which give a lot of clues.
http://s7d9.scene7.com/is/content/GenuinePartsCompany/1581518pdf?$PDF$

 

What does the label say? The MSDS is a good thing.

 

I picked this Krud Kutter up at Tractor Supply a couple of weeks ago. Need to clean out my estate sale parts cleaner so I can use it. I'll have to see if it is as good as it says it is though. I use Oil Eater to scrub parts fairly often but it can be a bit rough on the hands.

Update 05/12/2021 While the Krud Kutter worked great it ate the paint out of the inside of my Harbor Freight parts washer and ate several layers of paint off the Ford Hogshead I stuck in it to soak and scrub.
Works fine for cleaning and maybe too good on painted things. It doesn't seem to bother your skin or cause irritation on me. in an old partial barrel or other scrub tub it should work decent, Just not in anything you want to save the paint on.

 

I still get cleaning solvent from my local jobber, although its called mineral sperits.

 

Simple Green actually works great!
SPark

 

Cleaning solvent = Naptha is also charcoal lighter fluid. Although it works great a lot of us don't want a tank of it in our garages anymore. I used it for over 30 years and had an open pan with three or four gallons of it sitting on one of my work bench in three different shops over the years but don't want it in my home garage.

 

My old parts washer fluid had lanolin in it - it cleaned great and was easy on my hands. I'd like to find the same thing again.

 

We had that in a shop I worked in because the boss and his son in law didn't like what regular solvent did to their hands but I sure didn't complain. No idea of what brand it was as that was 42 years ago.
Worked in another shop that was the opposite it dried your hands out and when you got your hands in it you felt your face go flush. I always went and washed my hands right after washing parts when I worked there.

 

I go to the Dollar Tree and buy the L.A.'s Totally Awesome cleaner for a buck a bottle. Several of the local shops use it in their parts washers. Works great but do use gloves as it is a little tough on skin as it removes all the oil from your skin as well as the grease on the parts. It is water soluable. I use it straight from the bottle.

Dave

 

No, Naptha is a first distillate of gasoline. Aka Lighter fluid, Coleman fuel etc, used in camping stoves and lanterns. Good stuff though dangerous. Charcoal lighter fluid is probably closer to Kerosene or Diesel.

 

I use Diesel works good.

 

This was a deciding factor to get me out of the car business... too much exposure to too many harmful solvents. I'm very sensitive to chemicals, even in the machine shop I had to avoid certain things.

 

In the .mil safety talks, one of the instructors pointed out the problem isn't just the solvent itself, anything that is dissolved in the solvent, cadmium and heavy metals or whatever, is carried right along with the solvent through the skin and eventually into the bloodstream. Hasn't affected me any. Hasn't affected me any. Hasn't affected me any.

 

My first effort (on big stuff) is a face shield and a pressure washer. Next is oven cleaner in really tough spots then more pressure washing. Detail parts get cleaned in kerosene and rinsed in mineral spirits. I keep suspension parts, trans and differential parts separate from internal machine parts because of the sand contamination. For the carburetor, I have a good old fashioned gallon pail of chlorinated solvent. I always wear the appropriate gloves when using chemicals.

 

I use 100% mineral spirits paint thinner in mine

 

Diesel, heating oil or Bio-diesel- whatever I can get my hands on that is cheap. They also leave an oily film which is good if you want to stash those nice clean parts for a few years. Solvents that evaporate quickly will dry your skin out and then it will crack and bleed- and we know how good that feels! Just wear gloves with whatever you use.

 

Every time the Safety Kleen guy changed out the fluids in our tank, we would dump a quart of Dextron trans fluid in the tank...

 

It's important to differentiate between petroleum (hydrocarbon) type solvents vs. water based detergent cleaners.
The water based ones usually have fairly alkaline chemicals in them such as TSP, sodium carbonate or hydroxide etc. which as mentioned are hard on skin and aluminum.

Hydrocarbon solvents (especially chlorinated or otherwise halogenated) have their own well known hazards.

I have found diesel fuel a pretty poor cleaner, I guess others have had better luck.
36Roadster, how is biodiesel as a solvent? I have heard it tends to clean deposits in tanks, lines etc. that regular diesel doesn't, for good or ill. So I would suppose it might be an okay parts cleaner.

 

Wasn't DEXTRON killed off in an early Star Wars?.

 

I also use mineral spirits in a Gray Mills parts cleaning tank that has a lid that closes up, reducing fire hazard and evaporation loses. One of these days I'm going to run across a small Harbor Freight. or similar unit, and fill it with diesel fuel, which today has very little oiliness left in it, and is MUCH cheaper than mineral spirits, and use it for a pre-clean before going in the Gray Mills cabinet for a final clean.
Then I can put a filter in the canister already provided and presently just has a screen, keeping the mineral spirits much cleaner and longer lasting.

 

I thought I updated my post but couldn't find it, maybe in cloud somewhere. So instead of mixing solvents I replaced with Clean-Rite Purple Power Industrial Strength Cleaner/Degreaser. Used off and on over the last few years and seemed to be fine up till last use a few months ago. Last night opened the lid of the parts washer and first thing I noticed was that solvent level was down and the paint was eaten from solvent level down!. Then I noticed that anything that wasn't SS was corroded, pump had a hard start.. I cleaned what I had to [cyl head], worked ok. Rinsed part off and blew dry and left for the night. Picked up the part today and it had surface rust all over, never happened in the past. Seems like the solvent potency increased over the last few months? Strange, now I have a solvent tank mess to clean.

 

I have had the Purple degrade over time as well. Mine got coagulated too. The inside of my parts washer is pretty trashed. I'm thinking the D-limonene orange stuff. Maybe mixed with turpentine
This thread:
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/parts-washer-fluid-alternatives.1213194/#post-13839333 ,
covered some of this too. Mike

 

I just changed my parts cleaner used this stuff works better than any I have ever used.https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/crown-psc-1000-parts-cleaner-5-gal

 

Where does a guy buy a parts washer nowadays that can use a solvent based cleaner, but doesn't cost a mint. Most of the lower cost washers are for water-based cleaners only. I don't want to spend many hundreds of $$.

 

Like everything else, an invasion of shit out there on the shelves. You get what you pay for (if you're lucky); I'd be inclined to look for industrial auctions or estate & farm sales and things like that. "Buy once, cry once".

 

I bought that cleaner and a parts washer from Tractor Supply only to find out the washer wasn't compatible with washer fluid. If you do buy that fluid make sure its compatible with the pump in your washer.

 

I just checked Tractor Supply site and it says that the Crown 1000 is compatible with their parts washer and that the washer fluid is distillate based. Couldn't as of yet find how/what to rinse cleaned parts; just blow dry, water rinse, or soap and water??