The Best Penetrating Oil

[8339]

I found this penetrating oil through the Alfa 1900 site and thought I would give a try. It appears a lot of machine shops use this, it's 50% acetone and 50% ATF. Needless to say that after 40 years of using WD-40, Liquid Wrench, Kroil, PB Blaster etc. to loosen stubborn nuts and bolts this mixture out does them all. On a machinist forum (not sure which one)someone actually tested this on various rusty threaded fastners using a torque wrench and found this to loosen the offending fastners with less torque than the others. It is cheaper to make than to buy cans of the other stuff, however I could care less, the stuff works. Even while pulling a water pump off an S1 330, this sauce helped to loosen the silcone crap someone used to seal the pump. Give a try, go to any home store in the painting section but a quart of acetone and mix with it standard old ATF. I use solvent ready squeeze bottles which works great.

Richard Garre
Radcliffe Motorcar Company

[Yale]

And use in a well ventilated place. I used that stuff in art school to transfer magazine images to canvase (ala Rauschenberg but not as cool), and almost passed out.

-written while driving across country. Now in Lawrence KS where a diesel train locomotive is blowing it's horn. A lot. Nothing like a small town and a train.-

[Lowell]

Which ATF did you use?

[John Vardanian]

Hi Richard, what is the brand name? Thanks.

john

[8339]

Standard dexron/mercon ATF is fine. Acetone has a low flash point so it's flamable, but I have yet to set anything on fire, excuse me spontaneous combustion, I think the ATF ups the flash point significantly. No particular brand of either product appears to matter, at least not that I've found. Let me know what you think.

I should market this stuff as Radcliffe Good Shit Penetrating Fluid.


Richard Garre
Radcliffe Motorcar Company

[afwrench]

Richard, call it 8339 . Sounds much more sinister/official ! "yeah guys I use 8339 ,it never fails".You could even have a contest at next years event to pick whose picture could be on the bottle.If you can get him to come over I nominate 250GT. Mike

[8339]

Mike great idea and name!!! I want to hear who uses it and if they thinks it works.


Richard

[John Se]

I like to mix in some power steering fluid, check out the MSDS and you will find its mostly parraffins(slipery) from the oil base stock, atf is mostly detergent, and the acetone get it to a very low viscosity to penetrate threads

[Steve Meltzer]

I used this combo last summer to loosen up a throttle arm on one of the Webers on my Ghibli. I brushed it on 1-2X/ day and after 2 weeks, the arm freed up and was fine. I also heated it up several times with a butane torch (while on the car...fuel lines dc'd!) and tapped it gently with a hammer. Still not sure if just patience and heat were the most important part of the totem or not. steve meltzer, "unencumbered by the thought process"

[David Booth]

Interesting. How much power steering fluid percentage wise? Of course many PS units actually use ATF, and some European cars like my wife's Volvo use some stuff called Pentosin - an hydraulic fluid, so what kind of ATF do you recommend?

[8339]

David, I think the whole idea is use some kind of power steering fluid/ATF with 50% acetone. I haven't tried any other formulas, the ATF and acetone mixture works exceptionally well for me, which is why I started the thread. All of us working on old cars, some of us as a living or at least trying to make a living, need a good penetrating fluid. If someone comes up with a better menu by all means let us know.

Richard Garre
Radcliffe Motorcar Company

[peterp]

Thanks for posting. I will give this 50/50 mix a try. I'm currently marinating some Cheney clamps in WD-40, will try it with the Acetone/ATF mix (the clamps are in pretty good shape so not sure if it will make a difference, but worth a try).

I'm not sure if it's a well-known trick or not, but I found that ATF alone works unbelievably well for lubing throttle linkage. My 330 GT linkage felt rough even after trying a few different types of lube. I searched online and saw that many on were using ATF. All of the comments were on Mercedes forums, so I guess some Mercs tend to have problems with linkage. I tried the ATF on the 330 linkage and it works great -- the before and after difference in throttle smoothness is amazing. I did this more than a year ago and it still feels great, so the ATF seems to stay put in the linkage.

[peterp]

Tried this solution on hose clamps and it works great. Most were pretty clean to start with, but one was black and didn't respond to other cleaning. The ATF/Acetone lightened it up a bit -- not perfect, but better. You do need to be careful what plastics you put in it. I tossed a rusted umbrella holder knob from the deck into the solution and over several days it completely disintegrated the plastic knob -- all I pulled out of it was the bolt that was formerly inside the plastic knob. I have the solution in a plastic bowl that's holding up well, so definitely not all plastics are affected, but that knob melted in it