Especially for you salt water people...

Penetrating Oils

Machinist’s Workshop Mag™ recently published some information on various penetrating oils that I found very interesting. Some of you might appreciate this. The magazine reports they tested penetrates for break out torque on rusted nuts.

They are below, as forwarded by an ex-student and professional machinist. They arranged a subjective test of all the popular penetrates 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 almost as good as “Kroil” for about 20% of the price.

Steve from Godwin-Singer says that ATF-Acetone mix is the best and you can also use ATF- lacquer thinner 50 - 50 mix.



*AFT=Automatic Transmission Fluid

i thaught the p b blaster would have been better.

i thought PB was best also. though i use carb cleaner for really stuck stuff. kinda like the acetone mix. the really thin solvent can get into smaller places.

I was surprised too, I farm and use PB by the gallon.

Kroil has given me the best all-around results.

Yes, ATF/solvent is arguably the best on steel bolts/steel hole situations, but Aluminum corrosion is a different story. Kroil is far better than anything I've tried on that combo.

MC

i know pb blaster smells the worst

I'd be interested in a test of a stainless bolt in raw aluminum after lengthy exposure to salt water. That's one of the worst galvanic corrosion scenarios. I've faced it several times, and never really had great success, although I didn't try the ATF/acetone combination.

Would have been curious to see the CRC "freeze off" in that mix.

this is the second time within a week ive head of the ATF/Acetone mix...now my curiocity has been peaked and will mix up a batch to keep on hand....

I kinda like that smell, but then again I also like the smell of Bondo and Gear oil