Best overall grease cutting solvent for cleaning bike parts is kerosene. Not exactly friendly to the environment though. No solution (once used) is going to be friendly to the environment because of the dissolved petroleum solution you end up with from cleaning grease laden parts. Just keep reusing the kerosene. Put used solvent in a sealed container, let the solids accumulate at the bottom, then reuse the clarified kerosene.
Marc Boral Long Beach, CA
-------Original Message-------
From: Kevin MacAfee Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 8:04:40 PM To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Parts cleaning dilemma
Greetings all
I live in wild, wonderful and soon to be wintry Minnesota. As such, all of my bike restoration/repair efforts move into the basement. I recently acquired one of those small parts washers that works quite well. However, the solvent I am running through it is primarily water based, biodegradeable etc. and does not clean worth a damn.
Any of you have luck with a parts cleaner that is not smelly or toxic but works well? I have used Pedro's and another biodegradable kind purchased from bike shops that works well but it gets expensive in those little cans.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Kevin "I want a few more months of warmth" MacAfee St. Paul, MN.