Occurred to me last night whilst 'Sonicaring' my teeth... What an ideal piece of kit for cleaning intimate bits of cars, e.g. carb venturis, throttle bodies etc. May want to buy a cheapo one to be used solely on the car (!) rather than 'borrowing' the one from the bathroom... Anyone tried it?
I should think you'll go through the brushy bits very quickly and they ain't cheap. The very best way to clean a carb is dropping it in an ultrasonic bath. The trick is finding someone with a big enough one to take a whole carb - and who has figured the best cleaning solution to use - though plain water is pretty good. The results can be amazing. In fact you can clean allsorts in them. I've seem an old bike wiring harness come out like new. The old 'leccy brush could be pretty handy for getting into little corners mind Barkstar
Good thought about the ultrasonic cleaning. Wish I'd had that thought a few weeks ago when I was doing my full recondition, I've got access to several ultrasonic baths at work including one plenty big enough for major car parts... This one on the German bay must have had this treatment I feel: http://cgi.ebay.de/V-W-Golf-Vergase...ryZ33550QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Bit steep at 150 Euros, maybe, but I've never seen a cleaner one except in my VW carb videos! Still reckon I might buy a cheap leccy toothbrush, as there are surely future missions that it would be good for, with bits in-situ, on my g/f's car for example.
Don't put carbs in water If they are left any length of time with moisture in the progression drillings they will furr up and become unuseable
Ultrasonic bath (or toothbrush) works by 'jiggling', for want of a better word, at very high frequency. In the case of an ultrasonic bath, the fluid within is vibrated at something like 30KHz, 30 000 jiggles per second; with the toothbrush the actual brushhead moves at this kind of rate, making the fluid near it move too. This is mighty fine at loosening/removing anything not rigidly attached to whatever you're ultrasonic'ing, dental plaque, oily, grimy deposits on the surface of a car part, you name it. The choice of fluid will depend on what you're trying to remove, usually something with a bit of a detergent/solvent action. Water and carburettors is indeed normally a bad combination, as dissolved impurities can be deposited in the fine drillings and orifices of a carburettor (exactly like limescale in your kettle); but in this context, the agitation that is going on will certainly prevent this, and I think the chosen solution would usually contain some sort of detergent which would tend to retain as much 'stuff' as possible in solution. May have to try it on some of the big bits of my spare carb...Edit: not sure whether to try the toothbrush or the bath, probably better not use the toothbrush out of the bathroom....
Just been looking around on the net (as you do) and found this: http://www.ultrasonicsuk.com/fuel injection.htm Quite tempted, but no prices. Probably a bit extravagant as well, but tempted none the less!
Ive got a "Hot Bath" at work, it has a lance jet spray thingy too, it goes up to like 80odd degrees, but im sure if set it to 40degrees, this should get alot of crap off the carb... Would the high pressure blasts of the lance damage anything? or would the temperature cause any issues? If i get the nod, ill take some before, during and after photos... Cheers
Funkmaster, a few questions about this: Which carb(s) are you planning to clean like this? Are you planning on doing them 'whole' or in bits? Certainly if you were doing something like a 2e2 whole, I'd be worried about high-pressure jets of water and the various vacuum diaphragms and gaskets etc... If you're doing it/them in bits, not too many worries about temperature or anything else, I wouldn't have thought. Possibly keep it below 50C for the sake of any o-rings internally. Maybe dry in the sun for a few hours afterwards?
It would be a weber carb... probs bet to split it all up... but by doing that, would i have to get it re-jetted/setup again? I was thinking of buying a service kit for it anyways...
Ultrasonic is the way to go boys!! Only thing is its not cheap!! I use an ultrasonic toothbrush at work to clean up some parts. I also use ultrasonic baths to clean components which work in the way Pete as above described, the only thing you need to watch is only to put recomended water soluble cleaning agents in the tank. These are not to good at cleaning dirty bits of cars though so if you are going to combine ultrasonic with spirits like petrol or paraffin then use a seperate vessell in the water tank. If you can't get your hands on one its worth paying for the services of one. Bits come out so much cleaner than you can get by cleaning by hand. Cheers Domma....................
