How are you cleaning baked on oil off engine parts

[Domdom]

I have a water soluble non caustic powder that goes in my heated Bupi parts washer, that's ali friendly and will shift everything including paint. From applied chemicals.

Bob

So how does one go about making a heated parts cleaner, preferably without having a load of extra risks?

My washer is just the standard ebay 50 litre thing with a pump. Could this be modified?

 

[Screwdriver]

So how does one go about making a heated parts cleaner, preferably without having a load of extra risks?

My washer is just the standard ebay 50 litre thing with a pump. Could this be modified?

A risk free** heater would involve a heat exchanger. Something like a snake of copper tubingin the base of the tank which you can pump hot water through. Then you just need to heat some water and let it flow around the tubes etc.

Best one I have seen is a pair of old radiators, connected in a loop, filled with water but with a vent stack**, one of them in the workshop (a boatyard iirc) and the other one slung on a bonfire!

**the danger in heating water is only if you forget to allow the pressure to escape, typically with a vent which in pikey mode, resembles a chimney full of water open to the air.

<edit> obviously I am not suggesting the bonfire method here, you could use a kettle. I think you just want to keep the electricity separate from the tank so that you don't have to worry too much about using a solvent bath or dropping steel parts onto heating elements/wiring etc.

 

[8ob]

So how does one go about making a heated parts cleaner, preferably without having a load of extra risks?

My washer is just the standard ebay 50 litre thing with a pump. Could this be modified?

I am building one into an old commercial kitchen sink for degunking smaller items, it’s already got the immersion boss in the base. It’s going to be a lot cheaper to run than my Bupi, that thing has three immersions, a 3kw pump and takes an hour to get up to temperature before you can use it.

Bob

You can just see the element boss in the bottom right corner, the plan is to have a mesh floor in the bottom to keep things off the element and a suds pump running off a weir system to filter out debris.other side of sink will be to rinse with.

 

[Morris]

Just cleaned the back of my engine with this today. Mixed about 3-1 and a couple of brushes. Came up like new!

Out of curiosity, how would you use it with an ultrasonic? Half temped to buy one some day just because...

Bricol mostly answered this but just to add a bit. I use it at 10% and my ultrasonic bath is heated. I use 60deg.

 

[bricol]

So how does one go about making a heated parts cleaner, preferably without having a load of extra risks?

My washer is just the standard ebay 50 litre thing with a pump. Could this be modified?

I considered putting heating elements in mine - proper tank heater, or even just a tea urn or kettle element, with a suitable stat to switch it on and off.

But slight worry of missing something and getting real belt of 240V up the arm put me off. So I bought a second hand tea urn for £20, a 12V pump - filled the tea urn with detergent solution, heated it up, used the 12V pump to supply the brush on the wash tank via 10um filter, used the tank pump to return it to the tea urn. Big solids stayed in the wash tank, fine solids filtered out by the water filter.

Decent pair of industrial marigold type gloves from gloves-r-us, and it all worked pretty well.

 

[8ob]

You can buy a mechanical flange for an immersion heater element, just need to tuck it under a tray on legs in the base of the parts washer. https://www.stevensonplumbing.co.uk/immersion-heater-element-mechanical-flange.html

 

[Blobber]

I've never found an easy way to get the baked on stuff off, the engine reconditioner I used to use had some magic tank of stuff that used to bring everything up great

 

[bricol]

I am building one into an old commercial kitchen sink for degunking smaller items, it’s already got the immersion boss in the base. It’s going to be a lot cheaper to run than my Bupi, that thing has three immersions, a 3kw pump and takes an hour to get up to temperature before you can use it.

Bob

You can just see the element boss in the bottom right corner, the plan is to have a mesh floor in the bottom to keep things off the element and a suds pump running off a weir system to filter out debris.other side of sink will be to rinse with.
View attachment 322998

Pretty much how industrial dunking tanks work - pull your solution from the weir tank, pump it, via a filter, up to a sparge pipe across the other side of the tank, parallel to the weir, but on the opposite side, keep the water level in the weir lower than the main tank. Stop agitating things every little while to allow the surface oils and floating debris to weir over. Stick an oil skimmer in the weir to pull out the oil.

If you are being really flash, couple of lengths of angle vertically up and out the top at the back, have an "L"-shaped platform running on nylatron "U" shaped blocks on the angle, lifted up and down by a pneumatic cylinder - couple of roller operated valves to swop a shuttle valve over so it extends/retracts, and you can move the platform up and down, moving the components on the platform through the solution, helping to clean - you have a "dunker" cleaning machine.

 

[8ob]

I've never found an easy way to get the baked on stuff off, the engine reconditioner I used to use had some magic tank of stuff that used to bring everything up great

Its not all about making the outside or the bits you can see , where a hot tank (dip) or a spraybar Bupi win is they also soften up all of the crud in the oilways and waterjackets as well. A quick flush through with water and the job is done, nothing in the way of a cold app external scrub achieves this no matter how good the gunk is. The powder used is also really cheap and it has a rust inhibitor in it.

Bob