Penetrating oil eats rust or is it just Smoke and Mirrors?.
Samples:
Rusted nut bolts, nuts washers.
Penetrating Products tested:
Kano Kroil 1939 (no history formula)
Liquid Wrench 1941 (originally contained Benzene)
WD40 1953 (retail 1958 no history of formula)
PB Blaster 1957 (no history of formula)
http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/140204669/largehttp://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/140204704/large The formulas really aren’t a secret if you have access to a Gas Chromatograph mass
spectrometer. Many well equipped chemical labs have these today and even a small
chemical lab or you as an individual can send samples out to be analyzed, if you can
afford it. All the companies know the competitors secret formulas now days. You just
can’t market the formula as your own once you know what’s in it. There are a thousand
lubricants that you can choose that will perform the same job which is simply to reduce
the friction at the threads, and that many more solvents for thinning them down. So
there’s no magic involved in producing a thinned down penetrating lubricant, the magic is
in how you market your product.
The fact that most of these products don’t list the contents simply indicates to me that
they don’t want you to know that it’s simply some oil cut with some solvent so it will
seep into spaces with a very small amount of clearance. Oh, and there is always that dash
of something special that gives it its distinctive odor. The word clearance stands out in
my mind because none of these products will penetrate a metal seal. A close tolerance
thread that has been deformed from over tightening can form a metal seal to the inner
threads. There has to be a space for the lubricant to seep thru or it won’t do it’s job.
So far in the 1hour test I found that none of the products, “eats” rust as one of the
promotions boosted. I’ll take another look this afternoon and see how the samples look
after they’ve soaked for 8hours. The only thing in my experience that will do that is my
Phosphoric acid bath and even that takes a goodly amount of time to, “eat” rust. PB
Blaster has the most hilarious promotional video ad out of all of them. They take three
Styrofoam cups and squirt a sample of Liquid Wrench, WD40 and PB Blaster into each
cup. With in a minute or so the claim is “The PB Blaster eats its way thru the cup just like
it eats its way thru rust” Now maybe my “big old wife” would believe that, but have any
of you ever put a few drops of acetone in a Styrofoam cup????
I’ve removed bolts that had been soaked with all of the above products and in the end I
had to break them off with an impact. When they were autopsied by splitting the nut with
a hack saw there was no evidence of any of the products penetrating past the first or last
thread. I think the bottom line is that all the products are simply thinned down oil.
A couple of years ago I pulled a bed off a 1950 ½ ton Stovebolt and what I used was the
home brew formula of acetone and ATF in a mustard bottle, it worked just as good as any
of the commercial penetrating oils.
Bottom line is all you have to do is get a thin lubricant of your choice into most frozen
fasteners and they will come loose. So pick the one that fits your budget, your sense of
smell or which ever one you have on the shelf and you will in all likelihood get the same
results, none are going to “eat” or dissolve the rust.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
Soaking 10 hours:
http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/140212812/large
