What degreaser do you use?

[cowboy357]

I,ll Ditto what RWolf said on the Dawn Dishwashing liquid . About the best & safest Cleaner as well as Eco friendly as You can get .

For those that Might not know, Thats what They use to Clean the Critters with that are soaked during the oil Spills as Well as Dirt thats been Contaminated with Crude around oilwells or Major pipelines . That can Be Moved to Low spots in farmground Worked several times with a disk while spraying the Mixture into the dirt , letting it sit & work more . Might take Several times to clean it up Completely But It does Work & Proven to be safe . I Wouldn,t of Beleived it till I seen it . & a Surprisingly small amount of dawn mixed with 500 gallons of water . No Clue How it works but it does, as These types of Cleanups are Strictlly Government controlled .

I Use it in a Sprayer , Let it Soak & spray it with warm or Hot water with a Regular Garden hose. Unless its to bad ,I,ll Break out the Preasure washer . . Interesting topic though . Bob

 

[IslandTractor]

You know we can't do this all day

I have to admit that I saw them at Costco last weekend and came very close to throwing them in the cart. Not that I needed them but the Shammie Wow guy is a good showman.

 

[Heywood Jannockitov]

...but the Shammie Wow guy is a good showman.

He sure is!

 

[jsborn]

Do any and all of the above but wear a pair of coveralls when around the tractor. After leaving the area of the tractor and at least 20 feet away you can remove the coveralls, head protection as well as your footwear and you pass the grease free test as long as you keep your hands off everything!

Of all the suggestions this one is the only one I can make work all the rest cost too much and then you have to discard the greasy rags or watch the oily soapy water run all over your yard ??? just use coveralls and take them off when done. I don't mean wear nothing but coveralls I mean wear them over my regular clothes.

 

[IslandTractor]

I,ll Ditto what RWolf said on the Dawn Dishwashing liquid . About the best & safest Cleaner as well as Eco friendly as You can get .

I found this while searching the subject: (clean up of 8000gallons of animal fat....must have been one heck of a barbeque). One downside is the need for warm/hot water though.

"Dawn to the Rescue
Not only does Dawn help clean oiled wildlife, but on April 30, 1998, it was also used to clean nearly 8,000 gallons of heated animal fat off a roadway in Cincinnati.
After highway crews tried more than a dozen products and solvents to no avail, they called on technical experts from Procter & Gamble to assist in the cleanup. After making an assessment of the site, the remedy was clear優awn dishwashing liquid.
At the completion of the cleanup, more than 3.5 tons (1,200 gallons) of Dawn had been donated by Procter & Gamble to the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). Dawn penetrated the grease and enabled crews to wash it away using hot water from an area nearly the size of five football fields. Did you know. . .

Dawn was used to degrease otters caught in the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. That's when animal rescue organizations began to routinely use Dawn to help clean oil from wildlife. "​

 

[Gordon Gould]

I am trying to understand what you guys mean by an eviromentally friendly product. Do you mean you can spray an old gunked up motor with degreaser, let it sit, and then wash all the crud off onto the ground with the crud being harmless. Or is just the raw product itself eco safe ?

I have some equipment I would love to degrease but haven't because I can't figure a practical way to contain the wash and dispose of it safely. If I could get it to a car wash I would do it that way.
How do some of you grease big equipment ?

 

[IslandTractor]

FWIW, they used Dawn dish washing detergent to degrease the Gulf of Mexico after the BP blow out. They use it on oil covered birds too.

It apparently does well as an environmentally safe oil dispersant. On the other hand, it probably won't do much to disperse big globs of cold grease oozing out of bushings.

 

[Scooby074]

I am trying to understand what you guys mean by an eviromentally friendly product. Do you mean you can spray an old gunked up motor with degreaser, let it sit, and then wash all the crud off onto the ground with the crud being harmless. Or is just the raw product itself eco safe ?

I have some equipment I would love to degrease but haven't because I can't figure a practical way to contain the wash and dispose of it safely. If I could get it to a car wash I would do it that way.
How do some of you grease big equipment ?

Just the initial product would be environmentally friendly, any grease washed off wouldnt be.

Then again, I dont care and proceed to wash the grease off onto my paved wash pad. Grease, meet asphalt; Asphalt, meet grease

 

[Kenneth in Texas]

I just use some rags and spray the grease with wd-40 type substance and wipe it all off, messy yeah but gets it clean.

 

[RalphVa]

Haven't really had to remove grease/oil much in last few years. In the old days, when I was a really poor church mouse, I'd wet the engine, sprinkle Tide over the wetness, let soak and hose off. For small amounts, I'd use kerosene (used to be cheap). Now, you can get liquid Tide. Applied in a sprayer would work better than the powder. Varsol (if you can get it) and naphtha (if you can get it, MUCH less dangerous than gas, as it has no butane) work better than kero.

 

[crazyal]

I use Oil eater. The stuff works very well. I started using it to clean my MX bike. The chain oil would make a mess when it came off and this stuff would cut right through it. Lately I've been using it to clean the vinyl siding on my house. Costco use to sell it, not sure if they still do.

 

[6string]

I use Simple Green on everything. If there is caked on grease and dirt I will use Gunk or something similar.

 

[flyerdan]

Another +1 on the Oil Eater. Always have a spray bottle of that in the shop. For Dawn, you can often get it in gallon jugs at restaurant supply places, and I've gotten gallons of degreaser at Harbor Freight that I use in my engine cleaning gun. Stoddard solvent used to be the go to for cleaning up stuff until it got so expensive. Spent more than a few hours on a creeper cleaning aircraft bellies with that stuff.