Learned Something Cool Today!
 

Let me preface this by saying that today sucks donkey private parts, BUT, there has been one bright side; I learned a very cool tip today, that is especially useful if you do alot of work yourself.

I have been working on getting my parts washer, aka: solvent tank, working again. The pump was bad, and a new pump was half as much as a new parts washer, but that's not the news.

For those of you with your own parts washer, I just today found out the perfect "solvent" to use. Everybody may already know about this, but today was the first I heard.

In the past, I would go down to Catepillar and buy solvent straight from their pumps, and it worked okay, but it had it's drawbacks. It stayed on whatever you cleaned, left an oily residue, and that's a pain, plus once it got dirty, it was junk. Well, today I was told to use 5 gallons of Mineral Spirits, and 5 gallons of water. This sounded pretty weak to me, but guess what? It works KILLER!

The Mineral Spirits are lighter than the water, so they float on top. That means that they are what the pump picks up, and squirts onto whatever you are cleaning, working great. The dirt, on the other hand, settles to the bottom, like always, and the water keeps the two apart, and the Mineral Spirits remain clean.

Best of all, when you want to get rid of the dirt, just remove the drain plug, and just like an engine with a blown head gasket, nothing but water comes out. The dirt will be gone before the water is, so you save your Mineral Spirits.

This is incredible news to me. I hope it helps someone else!

Take care,
~Chris

any parts washer I've ever seen or used had Varsol in it.
That stuff gets pretty thick after a while.

I'll have to remember that one if I ever get my own washer

Re: Learned Something Cool Today!
 

we use 87 octane in ours. yeah i heard of that before. it just doeesnt last as long as you think.

I don't have a parts washer :( I just use a good old can of brake cleaner for clean my parts. I use to use carb cleaner, but when it evaps, it leaves an oil film behind. When brake cleaner evaps, there is nothing there but a clean surface :)

Re: Re: Learned Something Cool Today!
 

Really? Well, it's already better than the solvent I've been getting from Cat. I was just blown away by the whole half water thing, but I can see it work. Trippy. Something so simple.

:)

Take care,
~Chris