White Spirit as a chain cleaner

15peter20

Any good?

father_jack

Yup.

dawebbo

+1

on-yer-bike

very toxic

father_jack

Don't drink it then.

teulk

yUp just try not to pour it down the drain when your done.

father_jack

What are you supposed to do with it if you can't pour it down the drain?

Bobbinogs

I have read a few posts about using half a container full of white spirit as a degreaser, just drop your chain in, give it a good shake and fish it out, bit of soapy water, dry it off, relube and bob's your uncle.

Apparently, you can get a few good years' worth before handing in at the council. It all sounds good to me and is on my list of things to try. Get green brownie points and cheaper than posh chain cleaner too.

MRadd

We use white spirit at the shop daily.

Its amazing to clean up sprockets etc.. and is massively cheaper than constantly using expensive degreasers that never do as good a job.

Take-away containers are excellent and you can get lots of use out of a single drop of white spirit.

rolf_f

teulk wrote:

yUp just try not to pour it down the drain when your done.

Indeed - don't (I hope) want to kill all the little fishes in the streams that the drain may well feed into.

balthazar

Father Jack wrote:

What are you supposed to do with it if you can't pour it down the drain?

Let it settle out, and pour off into another container for re-use. I have a few jars of spirit which is years old, topped up rarely. The settled sludge can be scraped out to get the jars back (I chuck the sludge into old engine oil to go to the tip, of which I usually have plenty: I drive an old car..!)

crankycrank

As mentioned, just let the crud settle and re-use. I find dropping a magnet into the bottom of the container attracts most of the dirt so you can just pull out the magnet, let dry and wipe it off.

ct4oc

So to clean a rear cassette would you use a tub of white spirit and tooth brush? is it safe, is there any danger to the free hub?

markos1963

ct4oc wrote:

So to clean a rear cassette would you use a tub of white spirit and tooth brush? is it safe, is there any danger to the free hub?

Take the cassette off, clean in white spirit, dry off, put cassette back on, no danger to freehub.