OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Restoring, Customising and Modifying Engines Home made Carburettor cleaner

While I was doing some repairs I came across these recipes for "do it yourself" carby cleaners. There are 3 of them:

First one: 1 part gasoline, 1 part Diesel, 1 part MEK or Acetone and 5 parts auto transmission fluid. MEK is in paint stripper I think.

Second one: 9 parts Kero and 1 part paint stripper;

Third one: 25% Naptha or shellite (to act as cleaner) plus 60% kero (as a stabiliser) and 15% alcohol (as an oxygenator).

I have tried the second one but found it was a very lumpy mixture. However, it did seem to work as I had manually cleaned the carby in question many times before without success. 24 hours in that stuff worked-remember to remove any gaskets etc. Also, these mixtures are both inflammable (flammable these days)and will chemically burn skin etc - so be careful.

Hi Sparker, having worked in the RAAF, we used MEK, or to give it its full name, Methyl Ethyl Keytone to remove adhesive residue from finished surfaces. BTW it works a treat!

I either use...

Paint thinners, nasty Poo, only use it if your planning on using new seals or have it fully stripped.

or petrol.

Havent found anhting i cant clean satisfactorily yet...

Hi all,

I found acetone and methanol work a treat! Carbies come up like "new"

Safety warning (or "warring" as was on the side of my chinese grinder box!) Methanol can cause blindness over time. This problem occurs through exposure contact with the skin! Wear gloves and wash off with mild soapy water.
The MSDS's (Material Safety Data Sheet) for any of the chemicals mentioned in this forum makes for scary reading.
Please be careful! I dont know about you guy's but I'd rather save my eye, kidney and liver functions for more enjoyable pastimes!

John

I read that methanol and naptha are the same. Methanol is the stuff in anti-freeze. When I went to a hardware that specialises in paints and chemicals the salesman had never heard of naptha. He thought it was another name for mothballs but that's napthalene and is different. Of course I didn't know any of this at the time.That's why I went to recipe 2.

Sparker, methanol is a form of alcohol, made from wood, and is not a petrochemical. It has been used as an antifreeze, but is not a good one and is not what you normally get when you buy antifreeze. Methanol is highly toxic and causes very nasty failure modes of the human body, notably blindness. Naptha is a petrochemical, made from crude oil. Naptha, historically called Shellite in Australia and "white gas" in the US, is used as a fuel for camp stoves, a solvent, and can also be used as a component of petrol. It does not vaporise as easily as petrol, which is sometimes useful - but some versions of naptha are carcinogenic.
The ususal antifreeze is neither methanol nor naptha: it is ethylene glycol, and is both sweet, and highly toxic. Never, ever drink automotive coolant, and keep it away from children (who tend to like the taste).

Of the three items, the only one I would ever use for engine-related cleaning is naptha (Shellite), but it is no better for the purpose than petrol. Simple alcohols like methanol can be useful solvents for some purposes - it is an alternative to methylated spirits (or denatured alcohol to Americans) - but for engine-related purposes it is not very effective. I've never heard of anyone using glycol as a cleaning agent - it is a thin, slimy liquid that mixes readily with water.

Remember that every material I have mentioned is toxic and dangerous.

I agree with Grumpy,
I was using Shellite for cleaning my 350 chev for final assembly on a rebuild last year. (it was the first time I had used it) The only positive thing I noticed was that it did not seem to hold dirt etc. in suspension quite like petrol did. However at $90 for a 20L drum at the hardware store, petrol started to look real good! It was pretty fumey too, compared to petrol, did not try it on the carby though.... I think petrol is the cheapest way to go, (even using BP Ultimate) and does an ok job for your$..

Hi guys, this might seem like an over-simplification of the problem, but are there any proprietary products made; that are on the market, that will do the job satisfactorily?

True mate, true... I just didn't want to say Nulon carby cleaner!!! (as it starts to move off the Homemade topic) It has Methanol and acetone in the active ingredients! Sparkly new carby every time!

Hi Grumpy,
Thanks for the info. When I lived in Fiji a drum of ethylene glycol washed up on one of the remote islands. Half a dozen of the natives drank it and they all went blind. Awful stuff. Deejay would know about methanol too since he has RAAF experience and I now remember that Prop jet aircraft used it for a take off boost (at least they did back in the 70"s). Funny, thing the salesman did have shellite but only in large quantities but we didn't realise it was the same as naptha.

Sparker, it sounds to me as if those Fijians drank methanol, not ethylene glycol. Methanol is noted for being consumed by people who don't know better because like most alcohols, it makes them drunk, and that is often an attractive feature. Not long afterwards it makes them permanently blind, and if they've had a large dose they sometimes die. I've read of cases where incautious railwaymen put a methanol tanker on a siding in a depressed area. Some of the locals, seeing the "alcohol" labels, have fallen on it like starving wolves and suffered accordingly. They had no idea they were drinking poison.

Ethylene glycol also makes people drunk, but it does not seem to make them blind (though it may make them dead). Here is a report on its toxicity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_glycol_poisoning

Hi Grumpy, It does seem ironic that ethylene glycol is now used in clubs and pubs in the beer chiller equipment, and is what keeps the beer fonts frozen...
During the aircraft piston engine era the V12 inline engines were liquid cooled using 70 percent water and 30 percent ethylene glycol.

Maybe you're right. It was a long time ago. Give me ethanol any day......

Deejay, just about all modern cars use 30 to 50 percent ethylene glycol (remainder water and minor additives) as their coolant, mainly for its antifreeze properties. Way back when I was a kid popular folklore said when you were stuck in a desert with nothing to drink, you could take the dirty water out of the car's radiator. That has been a really awful idea since at least the 1960s, when manufacturers started adding first corrosion inhibitor, and later glycol, to the water to lubricate the fuel pump and prevent rust. Automotive coolants are very poisonous - dying of thirst is a better way to go (and if you get lucky and someone finds you, you may even survive undamaged).

The minimum percentage of glycol that will prevent corrosion is about 30. Higher percentages are used mainly to give better antifreeze capability (lower the freezing point of the coolant), but also partly because adding glycol raises the boiling point of water and thus increases cooling system capability a bit.

Sparker, ethanol is good for drinking, at least if it is clean and diluted with water and flavouring agents, but it makes a rather poor engine cleaning agent and an even worse additive to petrol.