This is a little off-topic, but you guys know everything, right? ;)
Would it be a bad idea to store unused motor oil in a plastic container that has been used for liquid detergent if it has been cleaned and rinsed? I am more concerned about bad effects on the oil than the container, via leaching of something into the oil.
I like the container because of its neatly enclosed drip-free pouring spout, but I can still smell the detergent after several rinsings.
Thanks for any pointers or warnings.
Not sure about the effect on motor oil, but I have been eyeing up the Kirkland Laundry soap empties for some type of coolant dispenser or similar use. It's a mighty handy dispenser.
Test the container with a finger or two of oil for a couple weeks. I once filled a plastic container with spindle oil. The oil sweated out the sides of the container over time.
No problem, its probably the same plastic used for oil anyway..look at the recycling triangle on the bottom:
Both are probably "2"
Have you ever heard the term "mouse milk"? (1)
Since you know the name of the product, you can look up the Material Safety Data Sheet and find out what the reactivity and flammability and pH of the product is, as well as what kinds of dyes and odorants the manufacturer has used to make the stuff look and smell attractive.
And the lingering trace amounts of the actual product might be measured in a few parts per million, but if you just need to know, in order to calm your righteous paranoia, by all means, GO to the MSDS. Bless you!
You're a Good Person and People Like You and you have a Right To Know, by golly! Don't let anybody tell you different!
Might as well look up the carcenogenicity of the plastic used in the container, too, as you might wind up with cancer of the crankshaft, and gawd knows, nobody wants their crankshaft to fall off before they're too senile to remember what it was orignally intended for!
You can fill up one of them intiguing plastic containers with your favorite motor oil and cut the top off so you have room to drop a test hamster in there and you can watch him swimming around in the golden liquid and if the hamster doesn't turn pea green and start puking after a day or two, well, you know that the plastic container and whatever it had in it won't hurt your motorsickle.
That's the way them MSDS boys test hazardous substances. They drown a lab rat in 5000 times the lethal dose, say it killed the test specimen and declare the material to be diabolically hazardous!
(1) Engineers talk about "mouse milk" when they consider the vanishingly small advantages or disadvantage caused by very small quantities of anything. They call it "mouse milk" because you have to milk about 100 mice to get a few drops of it...
I'd bet you would have to "milk" 500 empty soap bottle to get a single drop of the odorant that excites desperate housewives to fondle themselves intimately as they watch "Days of Our Lives"...
Be a little careful, here. I save my used motor oil to use in starting fires in the wood stove. I'll save you the effort of having to repeat a couple "experiments" I did. 1). Milk jugs tend to leak. They're too damned thin. 2). Laundry detergent jugs with the "push button" tap don't work, either. The oil rots out the little "rubber" cap on the tap, it crumbles and the oil leaks out.
Jerry
I use those to carry water at the track. I keep pre-mixed coolant in them. I can top off the coolant between rounds without needing a funnel.
- - Rex Burkheimer WM Automotive Fort Worth TX
ATP* wrote:
No it would not. Poly bottles do not soak up much of anything. If your rinse water does not foam then you should be just fine.
We used old white bleach bottles to store darkroom chemicals. They should be strong enough to handle oil.
There's a recycle triangle on the bottom of plastic oil containers. It has a number 2 in the middle of the traingle, and maybe the letters HDPE. That will "get 'er done".
Not long afterward, medical staff complained that some of their surgical tools felt slick. But it was not until January that nearly 4,000 patients learned their surgeons had unknowingly used instruments washed in the slippery fluid instead of soap.
Matt wrote in news:czb7f.194$lg.32 @news01.roc.ny:
If it was sterile then it is no big deal really.
pierce
When work was slow in the engineering test lab where I was working, I used to do maintenance on the machine tools. I decided that the vertical mill looked a little shabby, so I decided to paint it.
I found a can of grey paint and what I thought was paint thinner. But one of the other guys in the lab had used that can to save prussian blue layout fluid without re-labeling it.
As I poured the supposed thinner into the grey paint, I noticed how dark it looked, but the darkness vanished as I mixed it into the paint.
Later on, after the paint dried, the vertical mill was purple...
Senior son had removed the paint from a foot stool, stained it and wanted to varnish it. I happened to be busy when he asked, so sent him down to the shop for a small can of varnish. After he had finished, he was complaining about how strong the varnish smelled so I went to investigate; he had varnished the foot stool with PVC cement as clearly stated on the label. By the way, the stool still looks nice after twenty years. Gerry :-)} London, Canada
That is a great story. How did the paint hold up on the machine?
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