cleaning engines in crock pot

I,m soliciting advice from the experts. I tried gun wash in pot and it cleaned very fast but it eveporated Quickly and almost killed me when i walked into my shop.Then I tried 50-50 antifreeze and water and the cleaning rate is somewhat docile. Any advice? I'm new around here so I apologise if I'm bringing up a subject that's been done to death . Keith V.

I usually clean my engines with a can of spray carburator cleaner from Auto Zone. I had a Fox 35 engine that I bought on ebay that was locked up and covered with a thick brown gummy material. The carburator cleaner disolved it extremely slow. A friend told me to put 1 teaspoon of dish soap and 1 teaspoon of vinegar in a pan of boiling water and boil the engine for 5 minutes. I tried it and it cleaned 99% of the gummy stuff off. The engine looked almost like new again.

At the end of each day of flying I clean my engines and airplanes with a cleaner that another friend told me about. 1 quart of water, 2 tablespoons of laundry ammonia, 1 tablespoon of dish soap, 2 tablespoons of vinegar. Put it in a spary bottle. Works good for me and it costs less than Windex.

OK, Gary I just gotta know, What type vinegar? Red or white? Which dish soap?

Dude, instead of the black magic mix, use 1/4 cup of Mr Clean in a gallon of Windshield washer fluid. That or go to the Autoparts store and buy a bucket of GoJo Wipes. Got the cleaning fluid in the wipes and after you scrape the majority of the castor overflow off with a papertowel, one wipe will pretty much clean a full size airplane. I used to use 1 for several of my 1/12th scale combat planes.

>Dude, instead of the black magic mix, use 1/4 cup of Mr
>Clean in a gallon of Windshield washer fluid.

I see serious conflict of interest/shameless product placement issues with this post!

Thanks for the tip!

Gary, It's

**CASCADE FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.....TD

Hi Gary, I like most of your suggestion, however if you are using polished aluminium spinners the amonia will eat them up PDQ. Have you tried your mix without the amonia? My own formula is to add 1oz. of Dawn or equivalent dish soap to a gal. of water. This becomes 1/2 of the total mix for plane washing. The other 1/2 is Fantastic cleaner. Washes my planes just fine and emulsifies the oil too.

>At the end of each day of flying I clean my engines and
>airplanes with a cleaner that another friend told me about.
>1 quart of water, 2 tablespoons of laundry ammonia, 1
>tablespoon of dish soap, 2 tablespoons of vinegar. Put it
>in a spary bottle.

I would be very careful using an acid (vinegar/mild acetic acid solution) for general clean-up. It might be OK for aluminum, but I would fear for corrosion on steel bearings and the like.

Mind you, I flunked chemistry and then got a D on the rerun, but...

Isn't Vinegar an acid and Ammonia a base? Shouldn't they react into some strange salt when mixed? With much frothing and fury, et al.

Ammonium Acetate?

I think I'm about to adopt Dirty Dan's method of keeping engines in buckets of kerosene. I just unpacked a bunch of engines I brought home from the States and they're almost all locked up with gum.

I THOUGHT I'd cleaned and oiled them, but..

Oh well.. let's find out what crock pots sell for at Carrefour. And, strangely enough, they sell antifreeze here, though they don't call it that, of course (it's 85, uh, 34 degrees and humid as a sauna year round..).

>Oh well.. let's find out what crock pots sell for at
>Carrefour. And, strangely enough, they sell antifreeze here,
>though they don't call it that, of course (it's 85, uh, 34
>degrees and humid as a sauna year round..).

Hey Isky!

If you read the fine print, you'll see that it's called "Antifreeze and Summer Coolant". You wouldn't run just plain water in any cooling system, whatever the temperature.

The results are in for my 3 Bolt Fox 19. The little sucker looks NIB. Absolutely bright and clean after the antifreeze treatment. I can compare it with a NIB 50th anniversary edition Fox 35 and the finish is the same. In addition, the main bearing and piston/sleeve have definitely loosened up due to removal of varnish. This resulted in a *slight* reduction in compression, but the compression is still excellent. I suspected the engine was tight, because it ran pretty hot even when rich. I'm very interested to see if it runs cooler now. I'm pretty sure that this is a low time motor, and it may well need to be broken in. I'll treat it that way.

My recommendations for Crock Pot Cleaning:

1) If it doesn't need cleaning, remove it. I removed the NVA and glo plug, drive washers, and prop nut, since all were clean, and I would guess that the antifreeze might ruin the glo plug by poisoning the platinum element.

2) Use Prestone glycol-based antifreeze, since it is widely available, and has lots of goodies for keeping metal clean and free of corrosion. Don't mess with bargain basement stuff that may vary in composition from batch to batch.

3) Use fresh antifreeze every time, so that the cleaning action will not vary with time/number of cleanings. Antifreeze is cheap.

4) Cook on low overnight. If you are not satisfied with the cleanliness, cook it again.

5) Unplug the crock pot and let it cool before removing the lid and extracting the engine. Keeps the fumes to a minimum. Patience is a virtue.

6) Do your cooking in a garage or out building, not in the house. Avoids contaminating your home with the fumes.

7) Label your crockpot as poison, not for food.

8) Most importantly, remove all non metal components, as the antifreeze will etch away plastics. Any painted surfaces will also be stripped by the process. This is of course a feature, not a bug, if you want to remove old paint.

9) Very old engines, such as pre-war ignition types, may use "pot metal" castings which could be damaged by this treatment. Caution advised for really old stuff. My rule of thumb is that if it was sold with a glo plug originally, it is probably modern enough not to be damaged.

10) Wash the antifreeze away from the cleaned engine with warm water, and then oil, oil, and more oil. I load up the crankcase with air tool oil, and get it to slosh through the bypass ports into the cylinder by turning the engine upside down. Leave the plug out and the oil will just run out the head without hydro locking the engine and bending something important. Wash a couple of crank cases of air tool oil through it, and then drain out the excess oil and replace the plug. Best done outside where the excess oil can just run out on the ground. Squirt oil into the main bearing too. This all assumes that the engine was cleaned assembled. If you took it all apart, then just get it dry, oil liberally and re-assemble.

BTW- I have family and professional colleagues in Bloomington, and was there in June. I can see Tulip Tree from my mother-in-law's back porch. Memories...

Good Luck,

A couple of comments from my use with the crockpot.
1.I use the cheap antifreeze at 100% strength and change it out every dozen or so engines. It sits for months at a time and there is no change in the way it cleans...which is usually overnight on low for the blackened ones.

2. It won't work cold no matter how long you soak the engine.

3. Attaching wire to the parts makes it easy to pull them out and scrub while the pot is still cooking. Someday I'll make a basket.

4. I dry them with glow fuel and heat gun, then run on the test stand to get 100% dry. I found it was real hard to get the bearings dry without heating for a long time. Maybe putting in the oven is easier?

5. I experimented with a junk Fox 40bb. You can soak the engine overnight, then pull it out and leave it dripping wet on the work bench. Come back a week later and there is no rust or corrosion anywhere inside or out.

OK..

I've got two engines in the pot (got one used last weekend). I'm using cheap "coolant" (a couple different brands) that seem to be pre-diluted. As you'll read below, this doesn't seem to be working. I can get gallon bottles of good old Peak at the Ace Hardware, so I'll be trying that next.

The engines are a Wiley .36 and a Fox .35 Stunt. Both are locked solid. 24 hours in the pot cleaned the outsides of the Wiley, the Fox still looks pretty dirty. But both are still locked solid. I removed the head and backplate of the Wiley, and the crankcase was filled with fluorescent green bits. The piston is stuck to the liner. I'm putting both engines back into the pot and I'm going to leave them sitting for a few more days. I will replace the "coolant" with Peak tonight.

Interesting. Please keep us updated on your progress. I've frequently used the crock pot method to clean engines. But I'm interested in how effective it would be in getting engines unstuck. Thanks.
DennisV

The crockpot method has unlocked several engines for me with just an overnight treatment of full strength antifreeze on low temp. These were locked up from castor, air tool oil and 3 in 1 oil. All engines sat between 2-10 yrs to get locked up. 3 in 1 was the worst and left a hard plastic like residue.

Maybe Isky's engines need to be cycled a few times by heating and cooling to break the bond?

OK, another data point.

Yup, using genuine American antifreeze (in this case, undiluted Peak, at the high setting) does indeed clean the case much better than whatever the coolant I used earlier did. However, the engines are still stuck. I wonder if the earlier stuff caused the situation to get worse. I'll have to try this with another locked engine to see what happens.

Or I should say, the Fox 35 Stunt is still stuck. The Wiley, I tore down and forced the piston loose. It took my battery terminal removing tool to do it, and I've damaged one of the case fins in the process. It looks as though the piston's grown (won't fit in, even clean). I've had this happen to me before, but it was evident right after a flight, and I don't recall the Wiley locking up the last time I flew it (at the 2001 Nats). Hmmm........ And the con rod is stuck solid at the wrist pin.

Grown? How about Electrolosis? Or it could have just coroded if it wasn't coated enough with oil. I have just done, oh jeeze, 5 engines I got off ebay in the last 2 weeks. All of them were locked up, put em in the Crock overnight or a little longer, still one in there, and all of them, well, haven't done the last one yet, came loose THOUGH I had to put a prop on the last one and really work the piston down. No damage that I could find, just that the piston was up close to the top so there was minimal gap for the fluid to get in and lubricate. In this case I was waiting for the heat to melt the old caster and hopefully the fluid would seep in and liquify the residue. It came loose though. If I had done this without heating and really really torqued on it, it could have pulled the center of the piston out, I had a 25 that someone had done that too. Ripped the crown right outta the piston. Fox fixed it for me, put some other parts on and ran it up for around 17 bucks.

I don't know what fuel these folks were using, but the engines seem to run fine. One of them, a Fox 29, was partially painted blue. Came right off.
From somewhere near Parkville, Mo.
William Crane
AMA 6733

I bought a Sunbeam slow cooker at my local Wal-mart. It was a small one for about $8. Pour some antifreeze, plain old green stuff, into the pot. I like to take the engine apart, but some are concerned about getting back together correctly. I have tried it both ways. Both work. I typically drop the parts or the whole engine into straight Antifreeze, plug it in and let it cook overnight. I did forget one and it cooked a full 24 hours, but no problem. I then take the engine or parts out of the bath and using a soft toothbrush clean any stubborn areas off. Next I drain all the gunk out of the engine parts and then oil it up. It's pretty simple to do and you won't die with this method.
Bill
PS if you do die, my name is Jose Jimanez...

>PS if you do die, my name is Jose Jimanez...

"Ooooh I HOPE not..."

ROFL!!

And of course NEVER use that pot for food.

I'm sure most know this but I thought it worth repeating.

As an aside, I've heard that rolling your engine in frozen pot is a crock.

Well, he's using Hoppes no. 9. I can be funny too.

HI All, I have a fully dedicated crock pot which has worked quite well as described herein. My question is what is a close or nearly exact green for the older K&B heads? Thanks for your help!

>Don't use it on painted heads, unless you plan to repaint,
>then use hi temp. Chev orange for McCoys.

Could you please give a more specific reference for this paint? I have a lot of red heads, and might want to refinish the heads on some of them. Something in rattle cans would be optimal. Murray's Auto parts perhaps?

BTW-I picked up a 1.5 quart Rival Crock pot new at Meijer's for $10. It has only one setting, "low", and you turn it on/of by plugging/unplugging it. Currently stewing an old OS 25 RC to see what happens. Using good old fashioned Prestone green antifreeze, which claims to have all sorts of additives which are good to aluminum.

Thanks!

The McCoy orange is a near (perfect?) match to the early Chev orange (actually orange/red) hi temp engine paint available at any parts store. I'm guessing that McCoy, in order to increase sales decided to paint the heads simular to the anodized 1/2A's craze from the early fifties. Being the meca of hot roding (S. Calf.) the new '55 chev small block was hot stuff, I'd like to ask Mr. McCoy someday as it seems more than coincidental...make sure its clean, then bake @ 350 for 30-45 min.

The only down side is I left the nylon
>throttle arm in place (after much internal debate) and it
>got damaged, literally etched away.
>

The obvious follow up question: Anybody know where I can get a new throttle arm for an old OS 25 RC? GREAT engine, BTW, and really want to keep it in top shape. Sure looks nice now without all the old castor oil skunge...

Thanks!

Andrew, now that you have cleaned it, I believe that engine would now be a good candidate for a venturi and cl needle.

I think those were anodized red, the later engines had cast heads which can't be anodized.

Hi John, Thanks for the paint information. I am partial to some of the old engines and like to have them look as neat as they are! I'll try the local auto paint places to see if I can find your items. Thanks again,