Sonic Cleaner/ Pine Sol

Thanks. With a good parts cleaner, the cleaner or solvent used may not be that important. perhaps???
The reason I mentioned that product is that there are a lot of old topics around the internet about using the stuff, but since it sin't the same anymore, results nowadays may vary. hee.

Hi KGKZ1K,
There was a thread re: ultrasonic cleaning not long ago:
www.kzrider.com/forum/21-tools/605673-ultrasonic-cleaner


Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

The last time I soaked my 28m carbs in Pine-Sol, couple years ago... that crap turned them a very dark charcoal grey/black.... totally F'd them up.
Took me many many hours of soda blasting to get them back to an acceptable aluminum looking color.
I would never do it again in million years.

Hmmmm....wonder if different alloy composition has been used in carb manufacture year to year.
The reason I'm curious is because I have used it diluted to clean bs34's in a crock pot and never had it darken the carb bodies..
Shitty to hear It buggered your 28s

I too have found that soaking in Pine-Sol can discolor the aluminum and zinc alloy parts. Or not....it seems to depend on any exposure to air - as when / if the parts are not completely submerged in the solution in my experiments....

If the parts are completely submerged (nothing sticking out above the surface, not even a little), it seems to work ok. Just soak, remove, quickly rinse with water, blow dry immediately, then spray with WD-40 or engine misting oil and no problem....shiny clean parts as it should be.

But if any part sticks out above the surface of the Pine-Sol solution - trouble - I get that grimy, gooey grayish sticky snot like coating forming over everything, especially heaviest right at the "waterline"...

Maybe a chemist out there could explain that one?

I have an old WWII Army watch cleaning "formula" mixed up with ammonia and pine sol. in a bottle that works well in an ultrasonic . cleaner. it is supposed to have a solvent like mineral spirits in it too, but left that out. didn't want a fire hazard. have it written down somewhere??.....the ammonia makes brass bits look like new.

Lemon juice turns carb bodies dark too.

Good ol Berryman's carb dip is the best stuff I've found to deep clean carb parts. I always fully disassemble the carbs because that's the way to get all the passages properly clean. I've also got an ultrasonic cleaner but it's not as effective as the Berrymans against varnish. My current routine uses the Berrymans for the initial soak followed by the ultrasonic with Simple Green Pro. Even though the Pro formula Simple Green is said to be safe for aluminum, I've found that high temps in the ultrasonic will turn the carb bodies dark regardless. Gotta keep the temp down...

As a side note, I wish I had a nickle for every thread we get around here where someone does a half assed carb cleaning only to continue to have problems. Reminds me of the Amco commercial from a few years back where the guy says "I fixed that transmission 34 times". And on the dozens of carbs I've restored over the years about 80% of them had hard and brittle fuel transfer tube O-rings. And the only way to fix those is to ungang the carbs and replace them.

Do the job right the first time and save time in the end.

I too have soaked carbs in Pine sol in the past. It worked very well at the time to remove even the most stubborn of clogged passages and varnish. But....months later the shiny aluminum would turn a dark grey. The Pine Sol seems to etch the surface and leads to the aluminum tarnishing. It also stripped away all the zinc coating off of the linkages. That to me was the worst part, so I switched to soda blasting my carbs instead.
What Pine Sol is great at is putting flexibility back into rubber products. I soak windshield wiper blades in it when they get hard and dry. A week or so soaking in Pine Sol and they are like brand new again. Ready for months of service. I haven't bought new wiper blades in two years.

Food for thought.