Substitue for Methylene Chloride?

Try Castrol Super Clean. It dismantles grease rather nicely. This stuff is not a hand lotion and I would also recommend wearing a respirator if you are spraying it on. Available at Walmart.

Regards,

Boris Mohar

Got Knock? - see: Viatrack Printed Circuit Designs

Another source might be commercial laundry supply. Dry cleaning fluid. Brent Wegher

Methylene chloride 1.4 Water 1.0. Water floats.

Not necessary

if your water heater is newer (say with the past 7yrs or so), you will not get 130deg water unless you remove the thermostat knob and turn it fully max. this "green" feature was mandated some years ago, an appliance man clued me on to it (here in rcm or sci.electronics.repair).

--Loren

Nah! That's just varsol, also known as Stoddard's Solvent, mineral spirits, and fuel injector cleaner.

From that page you cite--

"Epidemiological studies have shown no excess risk from malignancies where workers were exposed to methylene chloride."

I'd be inclined to get some good ventilating equipment (enclosure with fan) and suitable safety gear, (gloves, respirator and face shield). Wash the parts carefully afterward. I don't know of anything that works as well.

There are some (mostly very old) dry cleaning plants that still use Stoddard solvent, which as you note is a petroleum based. Most modern dry cleaners use perchloroethylene (known as "perc"). It has its own set of nasty properties (carcinogenic, e.g.), but has one big advantage over Stoddard solvent: it's nonflammable. The fate of Stoddard-based cleaning plants was often going down in flames.

Perc and methylene chloride are related, but not the same thing. Methylene chloride is CH2Cl2, while perc is C2Cl4.

-- Tony (did time in the dry cleaning industry :-)

I suspect the pH of Cascade in water will be basic. I'm guessing that it would be around 11. I've worked around boilers where we used tri-sodium phosphate to regulate the pH around this range. Whether this will darken aluminum, or not, will have to be determined by experimentation. I *do* know that a trip through the dishwasher will darken freshly machined aluminum. I suspect that aluminum bodied carbs are anodized, so their reaction might be different.

I suspect that the caustic solutions used for cleaning cast iron are so strong as to make pH meaningless. If they're not as strong as I suspect, I'm sure they're right at 14.

My college profs and teaching assistants completely forgot to address he topic of strong bases and strong acids not having a pH, as such. That's something that confused the heck out of me until a fellow student clued me in at a cram session the night before the semester's final exam. That came as a revelation. He and I blew the top off the bell curve and I suspect the prof wondered why. He was the reason the rest of the class wasn't right up there with Jim and I. :-)

Greetings Loren, It is my understanding that the 130 max is to help prevent scalds. ERS

Find an auto machine shop with a 'Hot Tank'. For a few bucks they will boil or spray clean the cast iron parts. Caustic lye is what they use or used to use. It gets the paint, gunk, muck, filth and other crap off quite nicely. Pot metal and aluminum are another thing all together. The caustic materials in the 'tank' will melt them to nothing. Look for an automatic transmission shop. They have the stuff that will handle the non-ferrous metals.

Phil

Thanks Phil, but just about every part on these things is aluminum. All of the bolts on these things get replaced with stainless, so I don't clean the old ones. I live in a pretty small town with all of 2 transmission rebuilders, and neither one of them has the cleaning equipment they should have. One guy told me he pressure washes everything, and the other one, well, I walked into his shop, and by the looks of things I would question whether he cleans anything. I've got a few ideas from all the posts here and I appreciate them from everyone. Just to tell you how tough this crud is that I am trying to clean off the parts, I've even tried sandblasting it, and some of it comes off rather quickly, but most of it resists even that. I think the problem here is that some of these parts are off of vehicles with high mileage, and they are consuming oil. When the oil and gas get hot enough, they are caking onto the insides of these parts. If it is just carbon buildup, it comes off rather easily. I think the burnt oil residue is what is being resistant to my cleaning methods.

Thanks again Chris

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I don't think so. It is called Chlorothene NU, hence "NuTone Cleaners" . And many years ago there was Carbontetrachloride.

Lot's of chlorothene specific products, including Chlorothene EC for de-greasing electronic components. That my be good for the OP's use.

Take care.

Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario.

The stuff we used for etching aluminum parts wasn't just lye, it had other stuff in it, too, some fluorides and some other stuff that was proprietary. We used a saturated solution at about 150 degrees, dunked the parts carrier in for about 5 minutes and then out, then drain, then into the rinse tank and then immediately into the anodize tank. The purpose was to remove any oxide film before anodizing, oil and dust were removed in a previous tank of detergent stuff. If an aluminum spacer bar was left at the bottom of the tank because the guys making up the parts rack weren't careful, it would sit there getting eaten away and eventually all the etchant would precipitate out of solution. Then a couple of guys got to suit up and shovel out all the caustic goop in the tank. Loads of fun.

Re carburetor cleaner, the brand I bought had other stuff in it besides methylene chloride, meta-cresylic acid comes to mind as well as some other ingredients. I think the methylene chloride was just in there to get the surface oil and paint off, the other goodies were in there to work on the carbon.

I have used a regular dishwasher and dishwasher detergent on VW heads, it worked, but there's few passages for solution to get trapped in those heads. Any steel parts will flash rust, it's WD40 time afterwards, and if the detergent is too alkaline, it could pit the aluminum. I got away with a few white spots that wiped right off. Dishwasher worked just fine afterwards, too.

Stan

Where do/can you buy it by the gallon? The paint stripper that I buy contains m-c and it's about $20/gallon. And it's not pure m-c, so I'd prefer buying it straight.

TIA, Bob

well, maybe so, i figured it was a 'green' deal, not sure now if there was any real confirmation of that, but the yellow sticker will sure looker cheaper at a lower temp. btw, you don't get close to 130, let alone the older standard of 142deg (iirc).

--Loren

We sprayed some steel panels down with WD40 to keep them from rusting while finishing up some other stuff to make up a load to get powdercoated, and they told us that we couldn't have picked a worse thing to do if we had tried. Now I've read WD40 labels for 3 decades now and never seen the word silicone, but they swear that it contains silicones that they cannot remove with any kind of simple soap/pressure wash cycle, and that interferes with the powder adhesion. I still don't know if I believe the reason, but I absolutely believe that I'll never spray anything with WD40 again that I might ever take up to them :-). Light oil, auto transmission fluid (my favorite), etc, yes, WD40 no. [I absolutely agree that silicones are no-no. Never, ever use that cheap silicone vacuum grease on laboratory glassware and then take it to a glassblower for repair, or think you will ever scrub it out of a high vacuum system. There is no good solvent for silicone oils, and not even any bad ones. If you were lucky he'd hand your part back to you, if you weren't he'd toss it in the garbage can just to watch your face.]

-- Regards, Carl Ijames snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net

so, 0 ph is just the end of the ph scale, right? a -7 substance would be perfectly possible? thanks, --Loren

Just an update on this.

I took one of my parts to the local GM dealer when I found that they had one of these turntable hot aqueous solution cleaning machines. It uses jet nozzles to spray the parts in the tank while the table rotates. By the looks of how it works, I thought this would clean real well, but I was disappointed. Some of the grease came off, but there was a powdery residue left behind, even after pressur washing with clean water.

Chris

IIRC, 0 would be like, pure hydrogen (or more likely, hydronium) ions.

-7 would be like saying 150% (actually 1 billion %, IIRC.. it's logarithmic)) of the solution is hydronium, something obviously impossible.

Tim

-- "That's for the courts to decide." - Homer Simpson Website @