Cure (?) For Rusted Parts
05. May, 2009 
4 Comments
Any of us who have ever worked on old bikes that have been subjected to the weather can attest that sometimes nuts and bolts get rusted together. Many times your knuckles get busted before the nut does. Here is an interesting item that was stolen from a technical magazine and passed along to someone who forwarded it to a friend who just sent it to me…
Machinist’s Workshop magazine tested penetrants for break out torque on rusted nuts. They arranged a subjective test of all the popular penetrants with the control being the torque required to remove the nut from a “scientifically rusted” environment. The results are as follows;
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. BTW the acetone will eat your paint. Use at your own risk!
Naturally, this has to be a semi-subjective experiment. We don’t know what size fasteners were used for the test? And more importantly, we don’t know how long the penetrant sat before the torque wrench was applied?
But, its good to know that somebody is giving it a measurable test.
Anybody trying this should report back to Sam for an update.
I have heard that medicinal iodine works on rusted stuff. Anybody got other home remedies for rusted stuff? Lets forget the application of heat. Some parts are not tolerant of an open flame. Yes, an electric soldering iron can be held to a bolt to help draw penetrant. But for the sake of experimentation, lets limit it to ambient temps & chemicals.
I am glad to see that my fav, liquid wrench, beat the snot out of WD-40. The more that I use dubya-dee, the more that I think that it is entirely over rated.
That’s pretty interesting. I have been using Kano-Kroil for years as a gun cleaner and solvent but I had no idea it worked that well for freeing stuck bolts.
WE use Kano-Kroil exclusively on the gas turbines i work on. These engines will run for 8000-10000 hours before we need to disassemble. We will spry the Kano-Kroil on the nuts and bolts we need to remove and let it set for 15-30 minutes and it feels like they were not tightened correctly.
If you try to loosen the same nut/bolt dry we sometimes will strip the nut or wrench or even break the wrench.
This is on hardware that is 10/32, 1/4, and 3/8. we have tried WD40 and Liquid Wrench and there is a noticeable difference from the Kano-Kroil.
Thats my 2-cents
Dennis