Cleaning an engine
 

What do you use to clean scrud and dirt off the trimmer or chainsaw engines you work on ? I've been using Simple Green,gasoline,carb cleaner and parts cleaner. The spray cans don't last long and are expensive.Is there a cheap cleaning solution to use to get an engine clean ? Would soaking them in kerosene work ?

We used to use Sunbeam frypan cleaner for aluminium castings but it is no longer available.

Definetely NOT oven cleaner, it makes the parts go black color.

However I have heard, but am yet to try, that slowly simmering the parts in radiator coolant works.

Others may have more info on how to do it.

For general cleaning of the outside of the engine, the de-greaser available in gallon jugs at Costco works amazingly well. Don't heat it, and don't let it soak too long full strength or it will etch and/or discolor the metal.

For soaking off baked on crud, the antifreeze in a crockpot trick works very well.

AV8TOR

So the idea here is to get the antifreeze really hot,but not to a rolling boil,so the crockpot would be better and safer than on a stove.Next question is,what antifreeze to use,the full strength ,the premixed 50/50 or a Eco friendly type.I imagine the Eco friendly wouldn't work as it's chemical formula is different than the regular stuff. Can all engine parts be cleaned in this way,like the cylinder and a crankcase with the bearings in it.
After cleaning in the crackpot, what do you rince the parts with,some type of cleaner or just plain water ?

Straight green ethylene glycol antifreeze; hot but not boiling. Rinse with water and blow off with compressed air. Oil the necessary parts and reassemble. Rubber parts should be removed prior to the antifreeze bath. This is how I understand most folks do it. I don't use this method as Dawn Power Dissolver works fantastic in much less time for me.

Yes, that's the method for using antifreeze.

I keep looking for Dawn Power Dissolver to buy it and try it, but never can find it. Where do you buy it??

Thanks,
AV8TOR

I got mine at Walmart in the cleaning section with dish detergent and such.

I've been looking for it locally ,but no one has it or even heard of it. I found it on Amazon,but it's expensive for a 12.5 oz bottle. I can buy a gallon of antifreeze a lot cheaper, so now I'm looking for an old used crockpot in local online sale sites and will check out some yard sales.Wouldn't mind getting one of those ultrasonic parts cleaners that vibrates and has heat.A good larger one is pricey unless I could win a bid on Ebay.

Antifreeze around here is $12-15/gal and the Dawn Power Dissolver was around $5-7 when I got my bottle a year or two ago. Amazon has it for $10/bottle plus a small shipping cost. Being there's a walmart near you, ask them to order it for you. They will gladly do it and it will cost less that way.

I got my Dawn PD in Kissimmee Fla. I think it was about $3. The full store had none, as did most other ones I looked at in Canada and the Detroit area. The store I found was just the grocery Walmart. I like to use it because I don't have to take the motor apart and remove the rubber and plastic. Sometimes I leave it in the plane, not that I am lazy? I haven't tried it on a gas motor, but the glow ones work nice. I had some pretty crusty looking examples.

It's like 10 bucks a bottle plus half that for shipping on Amazon. Pricey!

AV8TOR

When I looked it up it was $10/bottle and $1.49/shipping. Walmart will order about anything they don't already stock. If you have one nearby, ask them. It would be about $3-4/bottle. A bottle lasts me a couple years.

Had a really scruffy 25cc Homelite torn apart and yesterday I got a spray can of Gunk Engine Degreaser,Heavy Duty Gel and sprayed it down last night and left it sit till this morning.I used a chip brush to clean some of the less reachable areas like in between the fins and clean between the flywheel fins.It came out really clean after rinsing it off.I let it air dry and then oiled the bearings.This all was just to get this engine clean,but today at a yard sale I found an old working crook pot and after I get a gallon of full strength antifreeze will try cleaning the next engine in it.I found some for $10 a gallon locally.The Gunk worked great and will be used as a backup in case the antifreeze doesn't get it all off.

The antifreeze treatment works great for glow engines, but I have to admit I've never gotten around to using it on a gasser. I usually just use that degreaser from Costco that I mentioned, and carb cleaner spray for the internals when I take them apart. Let me know how the antifreeze treatment works on a gasoline engine. I would like to know, and particularly would be curious about how it does on dissolving carbon.

Also on the subject of cleaning, do NOT use the carb cleaner/choke cleaner sprays on Zama carb internals. It ruins the various check valves in a Zama carb in microseconds. (Don't ask me how I know....) I've never had a problem cleaning Walbro carbs with carb spray, but I just switched to blowing out all the passages and verifying they flow with WD-40 only just to be safe.

Soap box time.... Man, it just irritates the ***** out of me the way they sell antifreeze all diluted nowadays. When I was a working mechanic, it was often difficult to drain enough out of a car cooling system to get enough pure antifreeze back into it for the proper mixture without getting the car up in the air and fighting (many times with great difficulty), to get the block plugs out to drain the engine completely. With this diluted crap they sell now, it would be absolutely necessary to drain the entire engine block, and in most cars add two gallons instead of one to get the proper mixture and protection. Big rip off!!

Thanks,
AV8TOR

Hey AV8TOR, here is our old RC outlet. I think all they have now is foam airplanes. I could be wrong, check it out .Capt,n

http://www.nitroplanes.com/60a-dy894...d-rtf-24g.html

Yeah, that's a real bummer. I still have several planes from them. They were very good planes and extremely good prices. It's too bad they've pretty much gone all electric now and it bums me out. They do still have a few 30cc planes though. I bought a couple of them from them about 6 months ago. I bought the MX-2 with the flame job on it, and the white one with the blue Thunder Bird on it. Nice planes. I figured I better grab them while I still could!

AV8TOR