Sonic Cleaner/ Pine Sol

Good Evening All,
Just thought I'd share the results if an experiment I conducted yesterday evening....
For the last couple weeks I have been considering the purchase of a large sonic cleaner (20l. Or larger) to aid in some of the projects I have on the go. Only issue is I have never seen the process first hand and have been hesitant to lay out the large amount of capital that a quality unit costs...$800 + buys a lot of parts that I could certainly use...lmao
While at work on Friday I mentioned the sonic cleaner idea to the Foreman of the weld shop next to mine...he is a Harley guy but a good dude none the less...and surprise! They just happen to have a small heated unit in the store room that hasn't been used in years...better yet he lends it to me.
The cleaner is quite small an I know off the hop it isn't going to fit a full bank of bs34's or vm29's...however I just happen to have the perfect candidates to take a swim...

A pair of grimy old keihins off a cb400 should work as the perfect test mules..

These should do nicely....
Now where is that pine sol...

Hey...its small..i know




Can't be bothered to break them tho....and yes it's too full :silly:

20 min in at 170ish°F.....solution is getting awful murky!



30 min cycle with 3:1 water to pinesol....

Defo improvement!
Flip em over and cycle again..

Just an fyi. pinesol no longer contains pine oil & it is a completely different product, so for guys without a parts cleaner it may not work as good as in some of the old youtube videos or forum topics.

Very minimal scrubbing with a tooth brush during cleaning...rinse with the garden hose...blow down with the compressor and a light spray/wipedown with old wizards piss (also known as water displacement recipe -40)...

martin_csr wrote: A few years ago pinesol was reformulated & no longer contains pine oil which is supposed to be a good solvent. There are store brands & non-name-brands that have pine oil in about the same ratio as the original pinesol. Pine-o-pine contains about 30% pine oil --- a much higher content than the old pinesol & the other brands.

Perhaps it's the glycolic acid that does the work?....or due to complaints they have re added pine oil to the "original" version...idk
It worked pretty damn well to my eyes.
Took off all the varnish and even the scorched on carbon with VERY light persuasion

Those came out very nice. I'm thinking it's because of the parts cleaner. hee.

So...at the end of my experiment..
I have concluded I will be going ahead with the purchase of a sonic cleaner.

Please note...i did not post this as an endorsement of using (or not using) pinesol to clean carbs...its all I had laying around that was non flammable and it isn't my sonic cleaner....

Just thought I'd throw up the pics/post incase it can be of use to someone who wondered as I did what the combination of pinesol/sonic cleaner can do.