Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 05:38:56 -0700
Reply-To: John Anderson <wvukidsdoc@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: John Anderson <wvukidsdoc@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: "Easy Off" Aluminum Cleaning
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Something I should have mentioned in my past post, the blue can easy off will clean off grease or combustion deposits well (BLACK colored things based on carbon I guess), the sort of thing I usually associate with a need to clean off engine parts. It will NOT really do much to take off corrosion on aluminum parts (WHITE colored discoloration on aluminum.) It will clean that to an extent, but something mechanical (bead blasting) may be a better choice. I never bead blast cases though, never sure you will truly get everything out of all oil passages, heads I will sometimes, but bead blasting can also smear aluminum over little microcracks, some rebuilders don't want bead blasted heads. Generally when I'm just cleaning up a head to reuse (something low mile that I know has life in it) I just use the fume free easy off, as many times as needed, HOT water rinse, air gun blow dry, then maybe some kerosene scrubs, then A LOT of soap and HOT water, air blow dry and follow with
a quick scrub in kerosene again to keep stuff from corroding. You can in fact not do the kerosene and keep it all Easy Off, soap and water if you blow dry it well and don't mind some minute surface rust (that will wipe away with a little WD40) on the steel bits. I assume it would be a lot easier to have someone "cold tank" the parts but "cold tanks" don't exist here in West Virginia anymore thanks to the EPA. You could make your own with a 5 gallon bucket and 5 gallons of carb cleaner, but at $15 a gallon now days, pretty pricey and sort of nasty to have around, of course in retrospect the fume free easy off is about $3.50 a little can so? Something that is around that I do to cases for final cleaning is a pressure wash system. I use a local automatic tranny rebuilder, he charges me about $15-20 for a case, I use that as the final wash, it does get things amazingly clean but doesn't always get off really baked on stuff so I always do the easy off first. It is VERY
important that the easy off doesn't dry on the aluminum, I spray it down good, let it sit a minute or so, just mist it with another spray, scrub some, mist it again, scrub some, wash it off in HOT water, repeat, etc, etc, etc. Anyway like I said before YMMV if you ruin your parts, don't come after me, I've been doing it this way on a fair number of engines, both air cooled, waterboxer, inline 4 VW and 5 Audi, on the cast iron cases I use regular old cheaper generic yellow cap easy off, etc, etc.
John
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