Can a degreaser spray be used as an airplane cleaner?

It may start to fade the color of your film. Degreasers are strong chemically. Avoid it if possible.

If you have Lowes or Home Depot around, go to the paint section and get a gallon of denatured alcohol for around $11. It will wipe the oil off, dry quickly and not damage the film.
It's great when you want to clean up epoxy or glue as well. Excellent for cleaning the engine.

I just use the glass & surface cleaner. works great and never dulls the covering.
NEDYOB

I mixed denatured alcohol in with my glass cleaner. I spray the plane down and wait about a full minute before I start wiping, then do the 'dry side' first (opposite the muffler) giving the alcohol/ammonia time to break down the oil from the exhaust on the 'wet side' (muffler side).

50/50 mix of Isopropyl alchohol and water and a few drops of Dawn dish soap.

(Isopropyl is 89 cents at wal mart for enough for a 16oz spray bottle filled with this mix. The bigger bottle will make two quarts for $1.19 last time I bought it. 70% works, 90% is better, but costs a little more.)

Cleans at least as well as glass cleaner and leaves no film, for less than $1 per quart. (16oz spray bottle)

This topic comes up a lot. I've read that using any type of alcohol will eventually deteriorate the gloss of the plane's covering. I use regular ammonia-free glass cleaner which I believe up there in the U.S would correspond to Windex Crystal Rain. I haven't tried mixing some dawn but if I'm not mistaken I think MinnFlyer does this and works real good so I'll give it a try.

I buy a gallon of windshield washer fliud and mix in some Dawn Dishwashing liquid. The gallon costs ~$1 and is enough to last an entire season.

Ken

Model Airplane News around 1991 printed a cleaner you can make at home and is real cheap, I've used it for years and it works great. Use 1 tablespoon of liquid car wash, 1 tablespoon Armorall, and 8 ounces water mixed in a spray bottle. Spray on and wipe off. Be carefull with alcohol, windex,amonia,and clorine as they can harm our film covering and glue joints over time. I've seen it happen to friends planes. Dan

Scrubbing Bubbles. (bathroom cleaner from the grocery)

I can't take credit for the idea, saw it posted here. I'm not that experienced, but it works better than the Windex I was using. A couple of experienced pilots at the field asked to try it and were immediately sold. It comes out as a foam and sticks to the surfaces. Wipes clean very easily, and the covering just feels clean.

Bob

Ken, how much is "some" Dawn dishwashing liquid ? I just purchase Rain-X windshield washer and the original Dawn dishwashing liquid. I'm ready to make my mixte but I don't want to add too little or too much. Do you measure your quantity or can you give me an estimate for a one liter bottle ? So far I was using Windex and this is fine but I am open to try a cheaper alternative if it work as good or maybe even better.

Thanks,
Séb

Seb,
I don't measure it when i put it in. It's usually a few good "squirts" of Dawn. I know that doesn't help much. With a full bottle of windshield washing fluid you won't be able to put much more than a few squirts in it anyway.

Ken

Hmmm.. Cheaper than my mix, and leaves out the Alcohol that some caution againts using, (Im too new to knowbetter but like to play it safe.) Sounds like a good deal to me!!

I just use the Rain-X windshield wash. Spray on, wipe down. Even cleans off the hard to remove blood trails from hordes of mosquitoes that come out this time of year. I guess to eliminate that problem completely, you could just use Deet on the plane before you fly...

Thanks Ken,

I won't add the Dawn liquid directly into the one gallon of windshield washer so I can add whatever amount I want. I have lot's of empty spray bottles so here is what I will do : I will add 5ml in one, 10ml in the other, 15, 20 and will do some trial to find which one do the best job of cleaning whitout creating a soapyness and get messy more than it clean. My guess is it need only a small quantity.

Hope that we will get good weather ( not looking good so far here ) so I can fly a lot this week-end and try my new cleaning stuff

Séb

I just use Windex or multi-surface cleaner and they work great. But, while cleaning one of my dads plane off, I found that the cheap generic stuff left these big blue streaks across the wing.



TakingFlight96

Yep Windex works like a charm, Ive used it and lots of folks use it at my field. I just prefer to use my mix, and now to try Kens mix, because Windex averages $2+ per bottle. I can get 4 bottles of my mix for that, and even more of what Ken uses for that. But then, I fly a beat up old trainer and clean it to get the oil off for transport and storage, not to make it purdy...