Cleaning parts
 

Hi y’all- I am restoring a 28 roadster. It’s all original currently so as you might imagine many of the parts are coated with thick dirt and grease. I am scrubbing them in a parts cleaner with solvent which works pretty well on smaller parts but larger items (I.e., bell housing) it doesn’t work so well and the grease and sludge are thick. Do any of y’all have any suggestions as to how to clean these parts and get them clean enough to prime and paint? Thanks!!

Mike

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Hey Mike,
A large container, wire brush(s) and large paint brushes. I use diesel fuel.
Cheap , good smell (yeah...) !
Have a cover for container, so when thru, can cover and reuse over/over.
Works for me...as recently as this week.
Oh...and good pair(s) of rubber gloves.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Hot pressure wash, putty knife, smaller parts use oven cleaner

Re: Cleaning parts
 

good sharp putty knife and lots 0f patience. Then the solvent. Happy cleaning.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Stiff putty knife to get the bulk off, solvent parts washer (like your doing) followed by a scrub down (or two or three) with undiluted Simple Green.
Dry with a torch to reduce rust flash over. Wire wheel the parts and wipe down with lacquer thinner before painting.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Heavy duty degreaser and pressure washer. Kerosene, putty knife, razor scraper, brushes. I filter the used kerosene with paint filter funnel and re-use it. A set of paint sprayer cleaning brushes is handy for small parts.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Rent an old school STEAM cleaner.

Everything else is modern and not as efficient.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

One thing that worked well for me with small parts was to take a 50 grade Roloc bristle disc, put it in a drill press at high RPM, and run the part under it until all the paint and grime was off.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Oven cleaner works for me every time. Spray on, and use a stiff brush after it sits a few minutes then hose off. Read the cautions on the can.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Dish washer! No not the one in your kitchen. We had a parts washer where/when I was working, commercial cleaner rotated parts on a turn table hot soapy water sprayed.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

If you have a professional steam cleaning shop in your area, take everything to them.

A word of caution from experience: do not use anything your wife (if you have one) uses on a regular basis, like the oven, any spatulas, stove top, shower, dishwasher, washing machine or dryer, towels (any towels!), washcloths, or any pots or pans. Just sayin’.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

I have used restaurant degreaser available at home depot in 30gallon garbage can. It is a one gallon concentrate. Placed an engine block in it waited a few days and hosed it off.
Have fun with your roadster.
Dan

Re: Cleaning parts
 

When I worked in a heavy equipment shop there was a 45 (55 US) gallon drum that was cut down to about 12" high that was used for cleaning large parts w/diesel fuel. The really big stuff was taken into the wash bay and cleaned w/a pressure washer.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Mike - I've found that in many instances a water-based industrial degreaser works as well as or better than solvent. I use Purple Power because it's readily available locally to me, and it's a lot easier to get rid of after you've used it up than solvent (I'm in California, and the Powers That Be are a lot more fussy about dumping solvent/oil/etc. onto the ground). I use spray bottle of Simple Green for smaller parts that I clean off in the sink (when SWMBO is not around to catch me...).

If you decide to treat yourself to a real parts washer with pump and all, you'll find that nowadays most are not rated to use solvent in them.

If you live in a city or don't have a power washer yourself, your friendly local do-it-yourself car wash will be your friend for the really yucky stuff. I spray with Gunk, then take over to the car wash and have at it with the wand and high pressure soapy water. Washes the bulk of the yuck into their catch basin and you're left with at worst a light coat of grease that you can easily remove.

Oven cleaner is good, too.

Both Gunk and Purple Power (or something similar) should be available at your local big-box or auto parts house.

Beware that many of these products do NOT like anything other than iron or steel because they have some acid or alkaline properties. Plating, pot metal, aluminum all can get eaten away. (I destroyed a set of motorcycle forks figuring that out.) For those, simple paint thinner is probably your best bet.

On another note - as you go through and clean things up, think about treating your parts to a rust converter step after you clean but before you repaint. I use Evapo-rust and other than it usually taking a lot longer to work (up to overnight) than the product data suggests, I'm quite happy with the results.

JayJay

Re: Cleaning parts
 

All I can say is I am glad we don't find ourselves cleaning parts like some of y'all do. :D

I am not sure there really is a 'best way' to clean old car parts. Even I am going to be upgrading our system in the future to a baking oven, but presently we use a heated sodium hydroxide soaking tank where the 15% concentrated mixture is heated to around 200° and the parts are submerged for about 12 hours while gently being agitated. After being soaked, they are moved into our Indo jet washer cabinet that has a Zep jet wash chemical in the water that is sprayed at 175° with a 5hp pump. This jet washer uses 12 fluid nozzles placed at different directions covering an 180 degree surface area. The items inside the washer rotate on a large turntable so it sprays from all angles. Generally about 10-15 minutes of cycle time is all it takes to make a basket load come totally clean.

Then we have a large rotary blasting cabinet that has a 49" x 36" drum that uses tiny stainless shot to mediablast (shotblast) parts. The amount of time savings these three machines can give us cuts our cleaning time/costs by about 80%. In other words, what we can accomplish in a day of cleaning & blasting used to take us a week to do the same amount. Even still, it is a nasty job.

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Re: Cleaning parts
 

Car washes prohibit greasy parts cleaning. As you said it goes into the drains ,often cloging them. You are doing them a disservice if you do that.

John

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Point taken, John, thanks. The ones I have used specifically have a mode of operation spraying "engine degreaser" and have oil/water separators in their lines for this purpose. But you're right, most don't allow that and have postings saying so. I should have clarified.

And in any event, you should always scrape off as much of the gunk as you can get to and set it aside before you hit with liquid, even high pressure.

JayJay

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Brent, I'm jealous. I have used lye also on wheels soaked for a few days. They come out clean bare metal. I think oven cleaner I use (spray foam) Is a base like sodium hydroxide. You still have to do a lot of scraping but it desolves most everything (the grime) that is left.

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Jay We do not have one like that. Yours must be really handy for large parts.

John

Re: Cleaning parts
 

Yes, sodium hydroxide is a good cleaning agent, -especially when heat is involved. It is also fairly easy to purchase since it is used in soap making by many homesteaders & minimalists.

As far as cleaning, hobbyists can build a small soaking tank (i.e.: large stock/cooking pot all the way up to a 55 gallon drum) and use the sodium hydroxide & water to degrease with. Get creative with a deep fryer burner or even a wood fire underneath to heat the solution. Anything over 130° will quickly expedite the degreasing process.

Next, the big box stores all sell inexpensive pressure washers to flush away the residuals. A large rinse tank can be used by recycling a old bathtub or livestock watering trough. The 'greasy stuff' that is floated off of the parts with the pressure washer is actually considered hazardous waste however if the water is evaporated out of the rinse tank where the grease & crud are allowed to dry, it is no longer considered hazardous waste and can be placed in a plastic bag to be disposed of with your household garbage.