Penetrating oils

[pancho]

I believe white wine vinegar works well to soak a dirty old carby, but I also heard someone tried it, came back and checked a week later and all that was left was the brass jets!!
pancho.

[JC]

I've got a 400 Maico square barrel engine that is locked solid in the bore. I've tried red Penetrene, WD40, RP7, dieso/ATF mix....all to no avail. It's been sitting on the last year or so with a mix of brake fluid and diesel that an old Polish mechanic suggested I use but it's still locked solid. I know the bottom end's free as I've removed the barrel studs and the crank turns a bit...enough to lift the whole barrel up a couple of inches. Anyway....I want to save as much as I can on this engine because I have good reason to believe it's a Wayne Moradian ported cylinder(Wayne did a lot of Wheelsmiths porting). Do I try the ATF/Acetone method?

Mark, you could try Phenyl (phenol??) - a cleaning disinfectant available from supermarkets. A diesel fitter put me onto it yrs ago. He had something like 7tons on a stuck piston in a truck engine with no success. Tried soaking in phenyl for a few weeks or so & got it.  Sometimes its worked for me, other times not. If you can get the bottom of the piston soaking in it as well as the top more the better.

[cappra]

 Penetrating Oils
Machinist's Workshop MagT recently published some information on various penetrating oils that I found very interesting. Some of you might appreciate this. The magazine reports they tested penetrates for break out torque on rusted nuts.
They are below, as forwarded by an ex-student and professional machinist. They arranged a subjective test of all the popular penetrates with the control being the torque required to remove the nut from a "scientifically rusted" environment.

*Penetrating oils ........... Average torque load to loosen*

No Oil used ................... 516 pounds
WD-40 ..................... ... 238 pounds
PB Blaster .................... 214 pounds
Liquid Wrench ...............127 pounds
Kano Kroil .................... 106 pounds
ATF*-Acetone mix............53 pounds

The ATF-Acetone mix is a "home brew" mix of 50 - 50 automatic transmission fluid and acetone. Note this "home brew" released bolts better than any commercial product in this one particular test.

Our local machinist group mixed up a batch and we all now use it with equally good results.
Note also that "Liquid Wrench" is almost as good as "Kroil" for about 20% of the price.

Steve from Godwin-Singer says that ATF-Acetone mix is best, but you can also use ATF and lacquer thinner in a 50-50 mix. *ATF=Automatic Transmission Fluid