Pine Sol as degreaser / carb cleaner

I decided to try this on some auto underhood bits today, and had very good results on both steel and cast aluminum parts.

One idea that worked well for me: after prepping the tub/parts/degreaser combination, I put the whole thing (with a lid) on top of the washing machine and ran a few loads of laundry through.

My thinking was that the normal vibration of the machine during the wash cycle would give some helpful agitation to the mix and increase the effectiveness of the Pine-sol.

It worked very well - I could see the mixture shaking and frothing through the cycle, and the parts are impressively clean. I don't have a baseline for comparison, but I think I'm probably going to stick with the washing machine supercharger whenever practical in the future.

Try this method at your own risk, don't blame me if your Rubbermaid tub springs a leak and drops a gallon of greasy Pine-sol into the family laundry. Maybe better to do a trial run with some shop towels in the washer...

I wouldn't have to put the container on top of my washer. I have a front loader, and it does a good job of shaking everything in the house.

The carb on my old truck needed a rebuild so I decided to give the Pine-Sol method a try...










30 hours later......



I should have used two bottles as my mix ended up being less that 50/50

But it still dissolved the crud nicely and I just hit the remaining stuff with a brush and rinsed. Then sprayed the small holes with carb cleaner and hit 'em with compressed air.




It's the cleanest part of the truck now!

I have a fuel tank that has a good layer of gooky varnish in it. Pinesol?
Will I create a corrosion issue?

I wouldn't think so. Pine Sol is made with pine oil. It cleans well, but shouldn't corrode the tank. You need to be sure the tank hasn't lost it's protective coating though. If it has, you will need to reapply it.

Jim

I pinesol'd my TLR200 tank that had rusted through. The pine sol degreased
and cleaned all the old gunk out. It did flash rust after flushing with water,
and after I had silver soldered the holes.

I just started my Moto Guzzi Ambassador carbs in their soak. I'm using the stuff at full strength, is there any reason not to?

I'm planning on checking them in 12 hours...

I used this method a couple of weeks ago on a set of carbs off of my cb900c (they look just like Hondo's so I leave out the pics), although I modified it a bit. Perhaps you guys have less than stellar results, will benefit.

I soaked them in a pretty undiluted Pinesol/water mix (everything that I have read, specifically mentioned not using other pine cleansers-only Pinesol). After a bit of soaking I decided that this was a bit passive (I'm very impatient), so I scrubbed everything with an old electric tooth brush. I then let everything soak some more.

I was very pleased with the results and have since used some of what was left over for other motorcycle clean up. I strained it and put it in an old spray bottle and use it for chain clean up, general degreasing.

I might ad that I used a can of Gunk carb dip on the smaller metal parts, it seems to be the best for all metal parts, but no go on rubber. The Pinesol cleaned up the rubber without damaging it. Which is great for a big bank of four ganged carbs.

What about painted surfaces? My car dealer insists on using what looks like magma to grease the hinges in the door jamb. I have yet to find anything other that Swish facto ($$$$) to remove this crap. I haven't tried pinesol...will it harm car paint? I wouldn't leave it for days, maybe 10-15 minutes then blast it with water....

Bump

On a friend's reccomendation, we used pine-sol to decarbonise several sets of heads and pistons recently. Worked like a charm!

Wow. I won't be surprised when we find out it cures cancer.

Well, no, but you will have very clean cancers.

Sorry for bringing this back from the dead.

Can you reuse the piston rings when you take them off to get the piston cleaned? Or should you leave the pistons on when cleaning the pistons with pinesol.

I usually remove rings when cleaning pistons by any method - facilitates making sure the grooves get cleaned.

Just be sure to put the same rings in the same grooves on the same piston and in the same cylinder. And make sure the rings all go on right side up. Most have a dot or some other mark to denote the top side.

Thanks man about the piston and the rings.

How about dropping in a cylinder? Would it mess up the cylinder walls?

This is amazing! Did you just let it soak, or did you have to scrub it afterwards?

Ready to try this tonight, as i have two sets of carbs to clean (an inline 4 and a V2). Will report in a day or two.

worked like a charm for us:

24 hours later, most of the grease is dissolved, but the old caked on gas (from leaks) has not moved at all.

I'll check tomorrow, and if no change, I throw it in a tumbler with the pinesol See what happens next.