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Penetrating Oils

409T

409T

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A friend sent this to me. Thought I would pass it along.

Some of you might appreciate this. Machinist's Workshop magazine
tested penetrants for break out torque on rusted nuts.
They are below, as forwarded by an ex-student and professional
machinist, Bud Baker.
They arranged a subjective test of all the popular penetrants
with the control being the torque required to remove the nut from
a "scientifically rusted" environment.
*Penetrating oil ..... Average load*
None ...................... 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 was a "home brew" mix of 50 - 50 automatic
transmission fluid and acetone. Note the "home brew" was 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 about as good as "Kroil" for
about 20% of the price.

Jeff
 
WD 40 is not a penetrating oil. The WD stands for water dispersion and the 40 means that it is the 40th formula that finally worked.

Jim
 
WD-40 was created in 1953 by three technicians at the San Diego Rocket Chemical Company. Its name comes from the project that was to
find a “water displacement” co mpound. They were successful with the fortieth formulation, thus WD-40. The Corvair Company bought it in bulk to protect their atlas missile parts.
 
KY will loosen up just about anything. :rofl:


Thanks for the info. Might have to mix up a batch of the 50/50.
 
HA - you think KY is good, try Astro-glide ;)
 
Back to the subject at hand: I wonder what the soak time was before they tried to remove the nut.
 
I think "soak time" depends on how rusty the nut/bolt is. Anywhere from a few seconds to several hours. On a super rusty nut I have let it soak overnight then added some more the next day before I went to try and get it off. It was still a bugger to get off. Think the best way is an impact gun.

I will have to try some of that ATF/Acetone.
 
Some times the only thing to do is to get out the Victor wrench. It will take it off.
 
der Spieler said:
Back to the subject at hand: I wonder what the soak time was before they tried to remove the nut.
Click to expand...

I remember reading this somewhere else. I will see if I can track it down, had all the test specs.

Here is where the original article came from:

Machinist Workshop Magazine
Testing Different Types of Penetrating Oils
Bender, Lloyd
Subject: Cutting fluids
Issue: Vol. 20 No. 2 Apr-May 2007

If I can track down the article I will post it.
 
I was out of penetratin oil so I stopped at the dollar store ( when I was a kid they were dime stores) and bought a bottle of finger nail polish remover that was labeled 100 % acetone and mixed it with the atf and soaked the fittings on a water well pump,.. the next day tapped the fittings with a hammer and gave it another shop 4 hr later put a cheater pipe on the wrenches and broke them loose. Next step is to soak the exhaust manifold bolts on the 67 ltd that has been behind the shop the last 20 years.
 
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