i'm in the market for a sonic cleaner, not an industrial size unit but i'd like to get a good hobbyist cleaner with a basket large enough to submerse a complete stromberg 97 laid over on it's side keeping it covered the whole time, maybe large enough for a four barrel too. how many quart cleaner should i be looking at? i'm not really against harbor freight but if there is a good one available at amazon, that would be my first choice, i've collected quite a few amazon gift cards from work, i'm an excellent employee.
I have a Vevor KSTH-40, 10 liter. Bought it for doing carbs. It's plenty big enough to fit a four barrel carb and it works great. Highly recommend it.
I have a 15L and did ~250 carbs with it. About 25% 4 barrels. I wish it was bigger. It is tough to get a 4100 entirely below sea level. I can, the basket is crowded and has to be stacked just so. I wish I had 30L or even more. Mike
Mike, do you dis***emble the strombergs first or do them whole? I have a few stuck 81's but have been soaking them in ATF/acetone to free them up, it really does work. My intention is to sonic clean them ***embled to get the worst off, then dis***emble them and do it one more time in fresh solution. I'm getting the 30L size but I'm not sure if it's any deeper
I did 2100's, 2150's,1100's, 4100's, 4300's and the like. Sorry, no Strombergs. I use 70 psi for soda and 100psi for gl***. I was taught not to bead blast intakes. Soda is OK, it washes out with water. Abrasives can imbed in aluminum only to fall out later. I boil water on the stove. Hotter the better. You get more cavitation the closer the water is to boiling. The heater can keep it hot, takes eons to get it hot. I burned up my original heater. they sent me a new one. While I was waiting, I started boiling. It worked so much better, I never went back. I dump it over the parts and then add the Mean Green. I only use 4oz/gallon of Mean Green, do the aluminum, then the steel parts. I don't do aluminum (or whatever it is), with steel or in solution that has cleaned rust/steel. It can darken/discolor the aluminum. Only use the solution once (two batches, aluminum then steel parts). Dirty solution ****s. They tell you to use de-ionized water for the best performance (I don't). If some hardness ions hurt, a handful of dirt can't help.
Before I knocked it off the shelf and broke it, this was done in a Harbor Freight unit. Ultrasonic cleaners are not space rockets. About any company can make one.
Im in the VEVOR crowd. Mine is the 15L flavor. It has a lift out basket, adjustable temp setting, transducer timer and comes with a ball valve and 3? Foot drain hose. That is handy. Some advice, if I may. Should you go with a VEVOR, there are various models of each size, it seems. Once I decided on the size, I explored the spec info. Big difference in wattage for the heater and transducers. I went with the biggest numbers. I had read about some cleaners taking hours to heat up. Most likely someone bought a cheaper model=less wattage. Mine heats up from 50 degree room temp to hot very quickly. I usually have Simple Green, Pine-Sol, and dollar store lemon cleaner in it. Makes the shop smell nice. I bought mine last year and it was less then $200, iirc. I don’t use it every day, but when I do, it is on all day. Something I read, these home use ones will not stand up to continuous duty. I leave the heater on all day, run the transducers, let it rest, run it, and so on. Just cooked some old locking hubs in it that were greasy and covered with different layers of paint. When I pulled them out, the paint had sloughed off.
Another vote for the Vevor ultrasonic cleaners. I got the 30L 600W piezo/600W heater version. Works great on old Stromberg carbs. Cheers, Harv
As far as chemicals go, I use "All Purpose Degreaser" made by Great Lakes Laboratories. I buy it from the local Sherwin Williams store. Will not turn zinc, aluminum or other non ferrous metal black or chalky. If you have steel mixed in with the piece that has rust on it, it will remove the rust and turn it somewhat shiney. I recently did some engine cylinders for a vintage twin engine go cart that I restored for a customer, cylinders were chromed, this chemical did not etch or eat up the chrome. The combustion chambers were heavily carboned up. This chemical also dissolved it pretty good. The first cycle in the solution I ran it at 130 degrees in the sonic cleaner. To get a nice final finish on the aluminum, I ran the last cycle at 80 degrees. The first cycle, I filled the sonic cleaner about 3/4 full of the chemical and the rest water. The last cycle I filled the sonic cleaner 1/2 full with chemical and the rest water. When I took the cylinders out of the sonic cleaner for the last cycle, the aluminum looked brand new with a slight shine to it. I talked to a chemist from Great Lakes Laboratories a while back, he said they work with 2 large transmission rebuilders who have extremely large sonic cleaners that use this chemical for cleaning transmission internal parts before rebuilding, and never had issues with damaging the parts from the chemical! Sorry no before/after pics!
When looking at the specs it's also good to read the online manual. Many of the lower wattage units in addition to having a longer warm up time they also have a limited run time, perhaps 10 - 15 minuets between cool off required. It's like most things in that you get what you pay for.
I picked the highest wattage 15L (both heater and transducers) I could find. The heat failed after bringing hot tap water to 140F after about 90 carbs, usually 2 ~1/2 hour cycles each (bodies and parts). There are two thermostats. The one you set and one that shuts the heating element off before it melts. You can hear this cycling while the tank is heating up. I picked a cleaner with ****og timer and thermostat. When the knob stat reaches temp, the red light goes off. The over temp probably cycles 10-20 times on the way up. The over temp stat is the one that failed, probably after a couple thousand cycles. They did send me a new heating element, cement to stick it on the tank and an over temp stat. I put the stat in and saved the heater. While I had no heat, I started boiling a bucket on the stove. Going from 140 to really hot made a big difference in cavitation. Grease and carbon come off better, parts pretty much dry themselves. The heater keeps it near boiling with no issues. My timer only shuts off the transducers, heat stays on. I run the cleaner on a plug timer set a little longer than a cycle. If I forget or, can't get to it, the heat shuts off. I didn't just do a few jobs in the machine, I did 250 carbs and the ge****ts and bolts from 22 transmissions. I even occasionally got time to do a few jobs of my own. I found it works better with less cleaner. As it is, I went through near 20 gallons of stuff (@4oz/gal). And clean solution is much better. You can't see through it after one carb. I originally set up to be able to drain and reuse the juice. I s****ped that. I also put small parts in jars of methanol, 2+2 or gasoline. Float it in the tank. It has it's dangers. You can get small stuff super clean. Ultrasonic is not the end-all thing though. I still soda blasted carb bodies, gl*** beaded the steel parts, used guitar strings to clean out holes and wire wheeled hardware. The ultrasonic just made the other cleaning easier. Out of 250, I might have had 3 that were "clean" right out of the tank.
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