Pine oil as a cleaner vs Truckwash.

[metalguru]

Read a thread on another site about the virtues of Pine oil as a degreaser, the stateside guys among us will know it as Pinesol and as you already know it has very good cleaning properties.

Unable to get hold of this in the UK and airlines not wishing to bring it here (can't think why) some research has been done and found in Sainsburys was this, It has a high content of Pine Oil.



The next thing to do was to set up an experiment with truck wash as a comparison, this is the stuff I use all the time albeit in a dilute form as it will take skin off!



I have an old Z650 in for some work, it has been standing for about 8 years and the carbs will need a clean. I removed the float bowls and their contents and put them in a sealable container and filled one up with Pine Disinfectant (the green one) and the other with Traffic Film Remover (TFR), and set to one side to see what happens, the TFR was used neat.





As you can very clearly see the TFR equiped container was rather eerrrmm airated, the lid did actually pop off with all the fizzing going on.



The end result was the Pine Disinfectant cleaned the aluminium very gently and removed all traces of stale fuel leaving parts clean. It didn't clean the brass too well but given a quick rub it soon came clean.

The TFR aggresively cleaned the aluminium to a point where it discoloured although if a dilute mix was used it would be less aggressive. It also cleaned the brass very well.

The parts were left to soak for about 2 days in the Disinfectant and about an hour in the TFR.



Here is a comparison as only one carb was submerged in TFR to demonstrate how reactive the TFR is to aluminium.This was after 30 mins.

Perhaps the next idea would be a sonic bath filled with Pine Disinfectant.

[Bixxer Bob]

[Geoff W]

I see the Swarfega TFR contains Sodium Hydroxide. If you leave your carbs in that it will dissolve them totally. Aluminium is soluble in both acids and alkalis, (it is amphoteric, good one for the pub quiz ). Also good at dissolving fat, skin, eyeballs and lots of other stuff.

[metalguru]

I see the Swarfega TFR contains Sodium Hydroxide. If you leave your carbs in that it will dissolve them totally. Aluminium is soluble in both acids and alkalis, (it is amphoteric, good one for the pub quiz ). Also good at dissolving fat, skin, eyeballs and lots of other stuff.

 

I thought that 30 mins was pushing my luck!
Use this in a steam cleaner at about 50:1 ratio and tends to clean rather too well sometimes.