rebuilding carbs

I bought one of those 1 gallon container with a basket of carburator
cleaner. The directions talk about leaving the part to be cleaned in the
solution for 30 minutes or longer.

Just how long can I leave them in there without damage to metal parts??

Can I leave them overnight??

 

I can't imagine that the solution would actually hurt the metal.
Anything that dissolves gas or oil couldn't contain water because, as
the saying goes, "oil and water don't mix". So, no water = no rust.
-Scott in SoCal

 

cleaner. The directions talk about leaving the part to be cleaned in
the solution for 30 minutes or longer. Just how long can I leave them
in there without damage to metal parts??
Can I leave them overnight??

Are you talking about this stinky stuff?

Product Name: B-9 CHEM-DIP CARBURETOR AND PARTS CLEANER

If so, can you take it back to the store and get some B-12 Chemtool in
the aerosol can, or find some equivalent aerosol carburetor cleaner in
a place like the 99 Cents Only stores for a buck a can?

That's all I ever use, it's all a motorcycle carb really ever needs,
they don't get covered with thick hard grease like some suspension part
that's been underneath a 1969 Oldsmobile for 300,000 miles...

That's the kind of part where you need powerful stuff like CRESOL to
dissolve the hardened goop...

Cresol: any of three poisonous colorless crystalline or liquid isomeric
phenols C7H8O

Phenol: 1 : a corrosive poisonous crystalline acidic compound C6H5OH
present in coal tar and wood tar that in dilute solution is used as a
disinfectant
2 : any of various acidic compounds analogous to phenol and regarded as
hydroxyl derivatives of aromatic hydrocarbons

B9 Parts Dip contains:

METHYLENE CHLORIDE 40-45% (same POISONOUS stuff used in powerful paint
strippers, dissolves plastic, etches aluminum)
MONOCHLOROTOLUENE 30-35% (solvent for gum and varnish, don't try to
"huff" it like model airplane glue to get high)
CRESOLS Mixture 10-15% (a really, really, really stinky POISONOUS acid
that etches parts that are covered with hardened grease after being
baked on for 20 years; it cuts through thick grease)
MIXED XYLENES 5-10% (paint thinner, dissolves gum and varnish, softens
and makes rubber parts swell up)
SODIUM BICHROMATE <4% (the chromate probably reacts with the aluminum
that's been etched and leaves it shiny-looking)
ETHYL BENZENE <2% (another solvent for gum and varnish)

I bought one can of that B9 stuff, and got so many complaints about the
stink of the cresol in it, I never bought any more...

One difficulty I can see with using a one-gallon container of B-9 is
that you can't get a whole bank of 3 or 4 motorcycle carburetors into
the can all at once, you'd have to take the bank apart and put one carb
in at a time, and taking the bank of carbs that far down isn't
recommended by the shop manuals unless you're replacing a whole carb
body or replacing the throttle shaft seals...

Then you'd have to go through all the trouble of re-synching your carbs
to get them all sucking the same amount of air at low engine speeds...

A bank of 4 motorcycle carbs will hardly even fit into one of those
plastic hospital basins that nurses use to give a bed bath to bedridden
patients. I recycle those plastic pans all the time, keeping several
around for solvent washing parts...

I just stick the bank of carbs into the plastic basin and use about a
quart of ordinary gasoline for the initial cleaning of the outside of
the carbs...

The gasoline and a stiff bristle brush will work for getting the
worst dirt off the outside of the carbs, and, when that's removed, you
can use a good quality Phillips screwdriver to remove the float bowl
screws and the diaphragm cap screws. To get the idle jets out of the
carbs, you need a small slot screwdriver that fits the idle jet
*perfectly*, otherwise, don't even TRY to remove the idle jet, you'll
bugger the little brass jet and play hell trying to get it out of the
carb...

Then you can start spraying the B-12 Chemtool or other aerosol carb
cleaner through all the jets and orifices and passages in the carb...

You will begin to realize that some passages wind up going three
different ways, and, if you block one of those ways with your finger,
the carb cleaner will squirt out the other holes...

The xylene, etc. in B-12 Chemtool is no where near as toxic as the
cresol, etc. in B-9 Parts Dip...

 

"krusty kritter"

SNIP

You are STILL doing it the hard way. All it takes is

1 garage sale crock pot and the bigger the better so don't
be afraid to look. Heck take the wife she'll love you for
going garage sale shopping with her.

1 Gallon of Zerex or Prestone. Best to find the green
stuff...

put the disassembled cabe and parts in the Crock pot. Top it
off and set the temperature to "Low" wait 24 hours....parts
should come out looking brand new. It even rips 40 year old
baked on castor oil. 8^)

Just helping with doing it the SMART[1] way.

[1] okay LAZY way.
--
Nefarious Necrologist 42nd Degree
Some people ride, some just like to show off their butt
jewelry once in a while.
Dum vivimus, vivamus
<3 )3~ <3 )3~ <3 )~ <3 )~

 

What kind of fish are you trying to peddle, Keith? The ethylene or
propylene glycol will turn into crystals in all the tiny passages in
the carb when you heated it, and you'd *never* get it out!

 

I dunno, it works. I've set of old mikuni's off a T500 I'll
check and see. Damn slides are stuck in place anyway so they
are most likely toast...pretty green anodized slides to.
Anyway Krusty it's a LOW heat doesn't even come close to a
boil...something like 170-180F or so.

I could be wrong...but I've seen it work. Oh and the carbs
I've seen cleaned that way have smaller passages.

--
Nefarious Necrologist 42nd Degree
Some people ride, some just like to show off their butt
jewelry once in a while.
Dum vivimus, vivamus
<3 )3~ <3 )3~ <3 )~ <3 )~

 

I ran a pH test on the propylene glycol that is used in Slime, the tire
sealant. It was about pH 8 to 8.5, so it's mildly alkaline.

I wasn't worried too much about corrosion, so I allowed Slime to remain
in one wheel for two years, but in another wheel that was stored, the
propylene glycol had seven years to do its damage...

That wheel had deep pit that were about 3/32nds of an inch deep...

The propylene glycol removed paint from the other rim and began to etch
the aluminum...

And, you've probably noticed what happens around the gasket surface of
your brake and clutch master cylinder when glycol-based brake fluid
weeps past the gasket. The paint is removed, and the bare aluminum
surface begins to corrode...

You can see the glycol crystals right there on the surface of the
corroded metal...

Antifreeze contains unknown (at least to me) buffer chemicals that are
intended to stop corrosion inside your engine. I've never run a pH test
on antifreeze...

But, I won't even consider trying your crockpot full of warm antifreeze
solution for carb cleaning when there are so many solvents available
that work better...

 

I'm with you about not using antifreeze as a cleaning solvent, but using an
old crockpot as a means to heat the cleaning solution, is a pretty good idea
at first glance...I wonder though about heating a combustible material using
a crockpot ?...The element is sealed on the newer ones so the only ignition
source I can think of would be at the power plug, or the thermostat housing.
Seems as if it would be a reasonably safe way to heat something like
Chemtool B12 or one of the other formulary solvents....Then again my
personal motto comes into play..."Most Likely Everything I Know Is Wrong"

 

using an
old crockpot as a means to heat the cleaning solution, is a pretty good
idea
at first glance...I wonder though about heating a combustible material
using
a crockpot ?...The element is sealed on the newer ones so the only
ignition
source I can think of would be at the power plug, or the thermostat
housing.
Seems as if it would be a reasonably safe way to heat something like
Chemtool B12 or one of the other formulary solvents....Then again my
personal motto comes into play..."Most Likely Everything I Know Is
Wrong"

Read the Material Safety Data Sheet from the link on the Berryman web
page, and find out what chemicals are in the can and what the flash
point temperature is for each flammable chemical before you proceed to
try to boil any of that stuff. It's already evaporating when you spray
it through your carb's orifices, it won't take much to light it off...

Refineries routinely heat desalted crude oil up to about 800 degrees,
by running it through
tubes that go through a furnace. The liquid crude oil is never in
contact with the flame, and there's not enough oxygen in the liquid
crude to make it burn. The boiling hot crude oil
(the temperature is far above boiling for most fractions of the crude)
is released into a distillation column where the light fractions and
non-condensible gasses go up and the heavy fractions settle to the
bottom of the column...

It seems like about once a year the Mobil refinery in Torrance is on
fire...

Refineries have a lot of fires, when the hot liquids or gasses that
boiled out of the
liquids ignite, and they have a lot of hydrogen fires from the
reformation process where hydrogen is "cracked" out of the pentane ring
of the low octane stuff. Three guys were burned badly at the refinery I
worked at, when hydrogen ignited...

So you want to fill a crockpot (which is essentially an open retort
vessel) with some kind of
flammable hydrocarbon and you don't know the flash point of that
hydrocarbon, and you want to boil the flammable stuff, or at least
simmer your carburetors in it?

Your crockpot could go up in flames like one of those turkey deep fat
fryers...

Check with your local fire marshall and your insurance company first...

Before there was such a thing as a "Darwin Award" for stupidity, I read
about a woman who would fill her washing machine with gasoline to wash
her husband's oil-soaked refinery clothes. Naturally there was a spark,
the washing machine caught on fire, and the house burned down. The
woman admitted to what she'd done, when the insurance investigator
interviewed her, but she demanded to know why the gasoline had never
caught fire all the other times she'd done it...

OTOH, I have boiled other solvents, non-flammable solvents, similar to
carbon tetrachloride in an attempt to clean oily carbon residues out of
a 2-stroke expansion chamber. Carbon tetrachloride was once used in
fire extinguishers, but I don't think you can get it any more...

 

<<snipped>>

That's why I'm always leery of trying anything like this...as I firmly
believe that in most cases..
"Everything you know is wrong "

I've seen people do lot's of stupid things ...many of which are preceeded by
the phrase ..."Hold my beer and watch this..."..... I try and do everything
I can from removing my particular strain of DNA from the gene
pool...primarily by listening to people that have a lot more sense than I
do...<LOL>

 

It fell out of favor when it was noted one of the decomposition products is
phosgene. Fortunately, it requires a relatively high temperature to
decompose, like that piece you were arc-welding when you set the workbench
on fire.