Which solvents to use for cleaning?

Your brake cleaner there is a naphtha (petroleum) based one according to the spec sheet. Brake cleaner is tricky because it can be all sorts of things inside, the only real requirement is that it flashes off without oily residue. My preferred brand is literally just isopropyl in an aerosol so I use it pretty much all the time.

Traditional nail polish remover is acetone, not sure what the non-acetone stuff is, don't get it on paint or plastic! WD40 is pretty close to being white spirit with oil in, decent cleaner but leaves residue and smells. Meths tends to be a massive cocktail or stuff but in practice you can think of it as being like alcohol and acetone (it's actually ketone, but, it's similar in use), i don't use it for that reason, either one works well individually and the combination can attack a surprising number of surfaces considering how universal it is. White spirit is really useful but I think most people only use for paint and brushes because of the smell and it being non-water-soluble. Oh yeah and carb cleaner if you want something really brutal and horrible that'll kill small animals but will melt stuff that other products don't touch (like petrol varnish)

If in doubt, isopropyl is usually pretty safe to use. It'll melt some acrylics and acrylic paints given long enough and can damage some rubber/rubber alternatives, but a spray or a wipe is usually fine. And it flashes off super fast. Pretty much my go-to. Petrol if I want something stronger, acetone basically if petrol or iso didn't work and there's no paint. TBH for bike use I don't think I really ever use anything apart from iso. For car use it depends how bad a mood i'm in.

Oh and paraffin for bike chains and similar, because it absolutely annihilates grease and is slow to evaporate making it better for using in a jar or similar, petrol's a bit too volatile.

Open to be corrected/improved on with any of these but this has got me to mid 40s without dying or destroying too much stuff

As above ISO/IPA is probably the best for general use, its strong but evaporates so fast you're unlikley to do much damage with it.

Don't discount white vinigar either...very good at freeing up rusty pliers etc after a long soak.

Parrafin, naphtha lighter fluid IPA and acetone.

Caustic soda for special occasions

Water is a good one to start with. Dissolves most dirt.

Alkaline dissolve grease (e.g. baking soda).

Acids can obviously disolve alkyl and loosen / clean oxide layers.

Hydrocarbons are different again and I get a bit lost. I think the shorter the chain the eaily they dissolve sticky stuff or longer chained hydro carbons (e.g. grease). That's my general rule but I am very very basic knowledge that I have mostly forgotten (obviously).

I love carb cleaner. Always comes in the the most powerful spraycan too. I'd use it for the washing up if I could. Just blast the food off the plates.

Pah! Kids solvents - you need some methylene chloride for glove and lung melting fun, and the old favourite trichloroethylene which I used to being home from work for bike cleaning duties!

Caustic soda is great for any steel parts, just keep it away from aluminium. It reacts with grease to make soap, which then disolves more grease.

I love carb cleaner. Always comes in the the most powerful spraycan too. I’d use it for the washing up if I could. Just blast the food off the plates.

I don't know what carb cleaner is, but it's bloody powerfull, it'll disolve paint off the engine block, and deposit it all round the engine bay in little splatters.

The other good one is "thinners", again, no idea what's in it but it cleans up raw aluminium a treat (probably best kept away from anodising as it comes out looking polished).

https://learning.acsgcipr.org/solvents/

I'd struggle to disagree with Northwind.

I was under the impression that Meths was generally Ethanol, Methanol. I know you can buy ethanol denatured with ketones and other stuff. Would make sense as it's less toxic.

Caustic soda (NaOH, or a soln of) isn't a solvent. But it is a good degreaser, typically it will saponify oily residues. It's how we used to make soap using the alkaline ash from fire and animal fat (useful info in a post apocalyptic world).

Boiling water can work. Most greases will drop massively in viscosity at 100C and float to the surface. A bit of agitation and soap will make it even better.

I'd steer well clear of petrol. It contains a whole heap of nasty stuff. Have you ever read the safety data sheet? It's typically a medium chain hydrocarbon (ideally centred around C8, octane). White spirit is safer, dearomatised white spirit safer still. The majority of it is the same but it has less aromatic compounds which will give you cancer. Also good to burn in petrol stoves if you don't have analytical grade hexane to hand.

At work I tend to use IPA and Acetone as my solvents. Mostly because they are on tap and work with my current stuff. Previously xylene was a favourite or a ketone like MEK/MIBK if it was a bit stubborn.

At home I find it convenient to use products as they come in nice containers. I tend to go for disk brake cleaner when you want no residue, soap for everyday cleaning and mild degreasing, white spirit for soaking really grubby stuff. I've never found anything that that combination didn't shift.

My ex, when moving house with her washing machine, had parcel taped the cord to the top.
Some of the tape had left a residue on the front of the machine.

No worries darling, I said. A little wipe with these thinners will get that off.

Guessing which washing programme you were selecting after that from the blurred mess of options was always fun. 😁

This is a bit of a lottery because you don't necessarily know what's in 'carb cleaner' or 'brake cleaner' and you don't always know exactly what you are cleaning, so you don't know if you're going to bugger it up as per kayak23.

Also, you can use something like WD40 to dissolve some greasy stuff, and then use a detergent or soap to clean up the WD40.

Also, caustic soda is very dangerous.

Something else that's not been mentioned - sometimes you want an acid, this can help with things like getting polymerised cooking oil residue off glass stuff; or breaking down the proteins in cat piss. Citric acid can be handy for that, it doesn't smell like vinegar does. For something stronger there's Killrock de-scaler which is formic acid, but this is properly acidic so that can be a problem in itself.

Like dissolves like.

Aqueous based dissolves aqueous based stuff.
Hydrocarbons dissolve hydrocarbons.

Meths/ethanol/IPA is a mid ground with hydrophobic/philic properties.

The "purer" the better. Petrol is a good hydrocarbon solvent but can have longer chains that stay as residues.

Dissolving things isn't the only way to clean up though.

What northwind and jonba said.

I only really use IPA or acetone.

Both are easy enough to buy. Keep properly sealed in reasonably cool place. Etc.

The other good one is “thinners”, again, no idea what’s in

Varies massively. Thinners for acrylic, cellulose, 2 pack? From the pound shop or a brand that knows what they are doing? Etc.

Also, killjoy moment:

I hope everyone is properly disposing of their waste solvents and not just putting them in the sink/bin.

Varies massively. Thinners for acrylic, cellulose, 2 pack? From the pound shop or a brand that knows what they are doing? Etc.

No idea, it was a trick one of the old guys showed me for cutting the elbow grease of getting tarnished aluminium parts back to a freshly polished look with about 10% of the effort of Brasso/autosol.

All really helpful. Thanks everyone

I forgot about the other solvents mentioned above, I have most of them knocking about but highlights how rarely I use them

Maybe I shouldn't use the brake cleaner as much, I use it loads - I even run it through my multifuel stove (Primus Omnilite). It's great at cleaning up the dirt build up in the joints of my daughter's flute 🙂

Like dissolves like.

One of my party tricks at work was to recover whiteboards which had been abused with permanent markers forever ago. Go over the marks with a regular non-permanent marker, wait a couple of minutes and then wipe clean. The solvent that makes non-permanent markers non-permanent also makes permanent marker marks non-permanent. 😁

I adore stuff like this, what irritating people might call "life hacks."

Also, caustic soda is very dangerous

Not really. Only if you eat it. Or store it under your eyelids. I hardly ever do that.

Used to love solvents as a kid, but for entirely different reasons.

I also have a bottle of mysterious "Thinners". Cellulose thinners probably but don't ask the bottle, it will say only "Thinners".

Got some bits of car sat in citric acid just now, to derust them- brilliant stuff. Wish I could get a really useful box the size of a car and just drop the whole thing in it. Though probably not much would come back out.

Someone recommended autoglym intensive treat remover to me in at some point. Might have been someone on here. I'd covered a frame in clear gorilla tape for a winter bikepacking trip and didn't get to reminding it for a year or more. Awful sticky residue left behind. The Autoglym did a pretty good job. Naptha base, from reading the back. IPA had done nothing at all.

Too late to edit. Tar remover, not treat remover.

My go-to at work is IPA, I use it to wipe over body panels to get rid of dust and any other residue before putting decals on, then use it to clean off adhesive residue after removing the decals on cars that are still being used as an interim while an instructor’s car is being repaired. Takes a fair bit of scrubbing, especially along the edges where the vinyl has shrunk leaving a dirty line of hardened adhesive.

We also have something called tar and gum remover, but that stuff is really dodgy to use indiscriminately, a bit of overspray or splashes onto the lights will trash them in seconds, the plastic outer lens will crack and split, as I found out after inadvertently splashing some while spraying onto a cloth - wrecked both front lights on a Peugeot 2008… 😕

Lighter fuel is another I’ve used for donks, back when I used to work in print and publishing, there were always two or three cans on every desk, for cleaning artwork, CS10 board, pretty much anything that would have a Rotring pen used on it. We’d bulk buy a dozen cans at a time.

Acetone is handy stuff, but as has been noted, it’ll take off some paint and printed lettering on a variety of things, as well as marring moulded plastics.
I was having a conversation this morning about a van that had come in some time back with a full commercial wrap, which needed to be removed prior to the vehicle being repaired and refurbished for sale; many man-hours were spent trying to get the stuff off, UV had degraded the vinyl and it would only come off in tiny fragments, and nothing we had worked on shifting the adhesive residue either.

So, IPA or ‘petrol’ lighter fuel, safe to use on practically anything, other solvents, try on an unobtrusive surface with some on a cotton bud, to avoid damage. Some tape and price labels seem to use adhesives that are designed specifically to not come off with any benign solvents, anything that will dissolve the glue damages what’s underneath - no idea why a retailer would desire their labels should be a permanent fixture… 🙄

no idea why a retailer would desire their labels should be a permanent fixture…

See Arnold clarke etc. rear window stickers on second hand cars from chain dealers... the are a nightmare to get off. free advertising for them.

Only if you eat it. Or store it under your eyelids. I hardly ever do that.

Well, I laughed.

Sorry too derail...Anyone know where I can get Isopropyl spray in the N.East?
T.a

Hiya,

I'm using http://www.rhinogoo.co.uk/ for mountain most of the stuff I used to use solvents for. Occasionally if I need to clean brakes I will use brake cleaner, but rarely and maybe one a month.

JeZ

I use Trade Chemicals for any bulk orders. Screw Fix Degreaser for most stuff, Euro Car parts for brake cleaner (I'll use this to free up cartridge bearings), but that's about it on the bike. The usual WD40 or GT85 where needed.

Thanks guys.Ben told wd,GT are not suitable for cleaning pistons n seals on Hope brakes, suggestions is iso spray.
Gonna just have too order online I think.