I am finally on the reassemble part of my project and the greasy dirty parts I keep having to deal with are really becoming time consuming. Currently I am soaking all my parts in degreaser for a day or so, scrubbing, resoaking, and then hitting with a wire brush before a final wash and dry to ready for paint. Is there a better way? I have heard about acid dipping but don't know much else about it. I could get the parts sandblasted but the sandblaster wants them to be degreased before he does anything. I had a parts washer but that seemed to take a lot of time as well. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
I use greased lightning,,spray it on let it sit a while and hose off. If the parts are real greasy use easy off oven cleaner,,it works great. HRP
Scrape off as much grease as you can and dispose of it properly. Don't send it down the drain to be someone else's problem. Because it will. Ask me how I know.
A steam cleaner is awesome. But not always available. Years ago, an auto repair shop owner, a friend of my dad, let me go over there and use his. Holy crap...that thing did a job on the grease...the paint...my face...lol. Recently though, I was cleaning a cruddy engine. Ran out of kerosene and didn't wanna use gas of course. Had no oven cleaner. I've always been impressed by how well Fast Orange hand cleaner gets the grease off my hands. So...I slathered some on the engine block. Started to melt the grease pretty good...actually dripping off the engine. Took a parts-cleaning brush to it, and it went even faster.
I know some use brake cleaner too. I just scrape of as much crud as i can, uhen use petrol or thinners to wipe off the rest. A large ultrasonic tank would work great, but whos got one of those. I use a small one in the studio.
Best idea I ever saw is to hook a pressure washer up to your hot water heater, poor mans steam cleaner.
be careful hooking up a pressure washer to hot water as not all pressure washers are designed for hot water. you could kill the pressure washer
X2, I've hosed off several engine/trans combos and a few engine bays this way. Best $3 I've spent, the heat and pressure work wonders and there's no clean up. Set up parts to be washed, hose them off with engine degreaser, wait and then blast them off. Even though they have a engine degreaser setting I would think that washing off really greasy parts would be a no no, so I go late at night to a 24hr place.....last thing I did was to clean out the chunks of my lubester and it worked great.
put all your greasy parts in a wire basket and take to the truck stop wash rack, get your parts steam cleaned for little of nothing and you don't have to clean up the mess
I have a varsol vat in my shop - I usually take the really nasty shit and let it soak in there over night. I don't scrape any of it off in my vat - I just let it soak and get saturated. Then I take it out and scrape what I can off with a putty knife; then for the last step I hit it with my pressure washer and it usually does the trick. I stopped taking my filthy shit to the local car washes just about the time I finally 'grew up'. No one wants to deal with your mess at the car wash when they're trying to wash their car - I don't and I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. I make all my messes on my own property and then I clean them up.
I have a cheap parts washing tub with kerosene in it. I let my stuff soak and brush it clean. All the crap settles in the kerosene so its easy to siphon off the clean fluid and dispose of the dirty stuff. Kerosene out of a pump is about $4.50/gal.
at the bodyshop I had my car at he had a old dishwasher just for parts cleaning , used liquid tide in it its amazing how well it cleaned parts ( make sure you disconnect the power to the heater coil to prevent a fire and you have to run the drain water into a 55 gallon drum to skim off the oil wastes and catch the dirt .) at the shop I worked at we had a steam jenny , wish I had one at the house ..
So far I have used a combination of soaking in simple green, scrubbing with a wire brush, rinsing, easy off, rinse, and repeat. I am on my third cycle and I think this should do it, there was some really built up hard grease on this part; and of course in the crevices where the brush won't reach. I had to get rid of my parts washer when we moved, I really regret that now.
I box up everything but the aluminum and pot metal stuff and take it to the local automotive/truck machine shop and have it soaked it their hot tank overnight. They come back looking like new. They have to deal with the mess. The cost is cheap compared to cleaning up the mess at home.
Some things just take common sense, cleaner and elbow grease. What's the hurry? Use the cleaning time to work out other problems in your head.
I thought it was implied that I meant all the dirty water/oils go into the clarifier NOT that you should leave the bay a pigsty.
PineSol is great for cleaning dirty carburetors and greasy parts. Leave them in there two or three days. It gets rid of light rust also.