THREAD-concoctions for loosening up seized engines ? let's hear your recipe

FWIW, I'm trying a few of these solutions in a gl*** in my kitchen, on a rusty nut and bolt.

Mol***es solution 3 parts water to 1 part mol***es works very slowly, not worth it IMHO.

Evapo-Rust works on surface rust really quickly- but not as well on deep, thick heavy rust. It seems to stall there.

VINEGAR actually works pretty good, overnight it flaked off a lot of rust that the mol***es and evapo-rust didn't take off- but still not as good as muriatic acid.

I may very well end up going back to muriatic acid for heavily rusted cylinder bores, to get the heavy thick rust out- and open up top ring land area- then go to a penetrant/oil/diesel solution from there. It seems like muriatic acid is the only stuff with the horsepower to get that heavy rust out quickly. Muriatic will get ALL the rust out, but won't necessarily free up the engine. It also does a number on the piston tops, turning them to mush. The engine has to be dumped out, rinsed, then soaked in penetrant, after the acid- to loosen up the piston/ring/bore area. Next time I'm using a respirator though.

 

marvel mystery oil

 

Marvel Mystery Oil, as it's generally cheaper than the good penetrants (Kroil & PB Blaster here). I leave the head on and pour it down the spark plug holes and onto the valvetrain trying to ensure that I get it on the tappets and into the rockers (if equipped). I fill the cylinders up and let it soak / bleed past the pistons. I have a 228 GMC that turns over now (turns slow on the starter, but turns now, still soaking) that was stuck when I got it.

 

Buy a couple of bottles of "The Works", toilet bowl cleaner. It costs about a buck a bottle. It practically dissolves rust on contact. It works like a penetrating oil on steroids. Gene

 

wow, we're getting a lot of good ideas and info on this thread...this is what I'm looking for- there are products out there that cost $20/gallon to $40/gallon or more, designed for this purpose, but I'm looking for a low-cost alternative that is a consumer-based product, that will do the same job for less. "The Works" is available at any Dollar Central or Walmart store. Being it's made for use inside the home bathroom, it should not be so caustic that excessive hydrogen gas is created, like with the muriatic acid.

elsewhere on the net, someone mentioned just hot taking/boiling the pistons out of the block chemically- to remove the piston material, i.e. acid, lye, soda solution, etc. to get the engine free

 

WARNING- you may not want to pour "The Works" toilet cleaner down a fully ***embled engine that has heads, spark plugs, carburetor on it- it may cause an explosion if the resulting gases are compressed enough.

best to use any caustic stuff with cylinder heads off, and outside in open area ! (i.e. acid, lye, drain cleaner, ammonia, etc.)- because it eats the aluminum pistons and emits hydrogen gases during the reaction

don't smoke or have open flame/spark around it- hydrogen is highly flammable- i.e. remember the Hindenburg, was filled with hydrogen to get it to float in air

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/investigations/hindenburg/hindenburg06.jpg

one thing about penetrating oil is, it's safer

watch this for demonstration of The Works mixed with aluminum foil pieces in a soda bottle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaoHoh4yU7A

 

***uming that you are not trying to salvage the pistons and that a bore job is obvious, then try a light acid solution like the stuff at the hardware store for cutting through calcium deposits. It usually a weak solution H2S04 or HCL and it will eat through the rust.

 

today I drove to Dollar Tree, and bought (2) 24 oz. bottles of The Works toilet bowl cleaner for $1 each plus tax.

Ho-lee SHEET- this stuff kicks *** ! It dissolved 2 small pieces of tin foil to nothing in less than 5 minutes. It also turned the test pieces, rusted nut and rusted bolt, to white metal in about 20 minutes, like a sandblasted finish. It did more in about 5 minutes than vinegar and mol***es/water and evapo-rust did all together on those test pieces.

Evapo-rust works fine for light surface rust, but it doesn't have the horsepower to remove heavy scale and pits that are found in a junkyard engine that has been sitting for 30 years outside- and it won't eat into the aluminum piston corrosion that becomes part of the cylinder bore. Evapo-rust was actually a bad investment, because for the $9 spent on the Evapo-rust, I could have bought 9 bottles of The Works at Dollar Tree. Live and learn...

I read the label and active ingredient in The Works is 20% hydrogen chloride, i.e. hydrochloric acid.

Now the odd part- the muriatic acid I bought for $5/gallon from hardware store, is 36% hydrogen chloride, but The Works has a much more dramatic action and effect. This is strange because one would think, the higher acid content in the muriatic, would make it work faster. But the muriatic label does say "aqueous", if that makes any difference.

mild acid solutions- they simply take too long. The Works will get results in 1 or 2 days, rather than 1-2 weeks.

I also tried a drain cleaner crystal that creates a soda solution, that had little or no effect on the tin foil, but it did remove some rust chunks.

nothing works like The Works, though- the winner is, the Works.

 

Dump some automatic transmission fluid into the cylinders through the spark plug holes and let it sit for a few years. Worked for me! Went from being totally seized up to being able to turn it over by hand with a wrench. This was on a 4 banger that had been sitting in a barn since 1953.

 

PB Blaster is real good stuff. (I bought two cans today, as a matter of fact)

 

Using acid seems like a dangerous idea. The acid might eat a hole through the top of an aluminum piston. It eats rust, but it also slowly eats aluminum and steel too. The native oxide on aluminum resists corrosion for a while, but once you get some pinholes through it, the aluminum will start to fizz and pit and etch away.

Drain cleaner also sounds like a bad idea, because it has sodium hydroxide in it, and sodium hydroxide eats up aluminum pretty fast. They add little s****s of aluminum foil to Draino crystals because it makes the Draino fizz as it eats up the aluminum foil. I think it's pretty safe on steel though at least. The piston tops are what I'd be worried about. The fizzing bubbles that come off aluminum when sodium hydroxide is etching it are hydrogen I think (flammable).

I'm not saying these things don't work, but just remember that the engine might be useless if you etch it too much with acids or bases and eat holes right through the tops of the pistons or etch deep craters in the cylinder walls.

 

PB Blaster is over-rated, I tried that on a 401 nailhead engine that had almost zero rust in the bores, the engine is still seized to this day. In tests PB Blaster did not do as well as Liquid Wrench, on breakaway torque required on rusted bolts. PB is all hype, IMHO.

 

acid dipping is a common procedure in antique engine restoration, for cast iron blocks, heads, cranks, blocks, rods. It's also used on old car bodies and frames.

the pistons are junk in an engine seized as badly as these, the corrosion from sides of bore has actually eaten into piston sides about 1/4" or more all around- dissolving the pistons is the whole purpose, to break them free from the bore

it won't eat into the cast iron enough to damage is, it will only eat up the rust.

 

the key words there are "years" and "sitting in a barn"

sitting outside in a car, for 50 years, with hood half off, and intake removed, this one Dodge engine I have is much worse seized

a picture starts to emerge from breaking loose a couple of these engines over the years- "recently seized" will respond to penetrating oil- but "ancient power seized" requires some nasty chemicals, or drilling out pistons and smashing them out

 

Yeah, I guess the muriatic acid they sell in stores is a whole lot less aggressive at etching away steel than the full strength "reagent grade" hydrochloric acid stuff we use at work. "Muriatic Acid" is an old term for hydrochloric acid. If you throw a bolt or something in the full strength hydrochloric acid, it fizzes up like crazy, and a few hours later there is nothing left. The Muriatic acid they sell in stores is probably that stuff watered down about 10 to 1.

Naval Jelly has phosphoric acid as the main ingredient. Phosphoric acid does a pretty good job of eating rust without attacking the steel too much.

"Evaporust" works pretty good, but it's pretty slow. It's good for dunking small parts with mostly surface rust. You have to keep the part submerged in it though -- sometimes for days or weeks. The good thing about Evaporust though is that it doesn't harm the metal or plastics. It's great for things like flimsy steel trim or parts with br*** bushings.

 

I want to try some phosporic acid, because it's not as fumey and caustic- used it for bodywork in the old days, we'd sandblast an entire car to bare metal, then wipe it down with etching solution prior to priming, i.e. a water/phosphoric acid mix. The "etch" came in gallon containers, and had to be mixed with water. Now they sell 2-part etch primer with zinc in one jug, acid/thinner in another- mix 50/50 and spray on bare metal. The older paint supply shops still have gallons of that old hand etching solution in stock, I want to buy a gallon and soak some parts in it, just to see how it works for rust removal.

There's a catch 22 here, the weaker the solution is to protect the parent metal and make it easy to work with, the longer it takes to eat rust, and the less effective it is at eating heavy rust.

Evapo-rust does not have a long life, with heavily rusted parts. The $9 quart bottle I purchased, was actually a bad investment, compared to muriatic acid $5 for 1 gallon at the hardware store.

 

With the heads off.... get some Kroil and put an inch in each cyl if possible. Heat the pistons daily with a heavy duty heat gun, it may take a week or two but that stuff works! I got turned on to it while building a couple of old Mauser 98's into custom rifles. An action wrench wouldn't loosen the bbl from the action, hell they had been screwed down since 1909. Plugged the bbl, put a 1/4 inch of kroil in the reciever lug area and put heat to it every day for two weeks. Eventually the oil crept past the crush fit threads and bam, unscrewed like it was done yesterday. I used it to free up a 352 FE and a 400sbc.YMMV

 

worked at ford motor company as a machine repairman And I can tell you this Kroil is killer it is the best stuff I have ever used but cant find it anywhere.comes in an orange can.I used Deep Creep on a 54 chevy took all the plugs out made a stub to fit in the front of the crank after soaking for a couple of days got it to move about 1/4 inch not long after that let it soak somemore once got it movin it finally freed up.still preaty tight so I had my buddie drag me up the road ran it through the gears with the plugs out .got back home hit with the starter she wizzed over .stuck plugs in it poured some gas in it wam that split manfold sounded good.Changed oil home free.Deep Creep is made for locked up motor cycle engines works good for me.

 

thanks for continued answers guys, all will help- I have 9 engines sitting here now of various makes, from junkyard saviour crusade recently, only got 3 of them freed up so far, so I have some work to do yet- all are soaking in various different stuff on top of pistons- the Pontiac GTO 400 I have pickled from top to bottom with diesel fuel/oil/trans fluid

now that gun story is neat, and that last engine story you got loose/running, that's a good one. I saw someone get an old Chevy flathead six in a truck going that way, by dragging it with a chain

interesting sidenote- I have my own 100 yard rifle range cut through woods and shoot often, reload, etc.

I had a '43 Mauser K98 w/laminated stock and stamped trigger guard parts, late war model, in 8x57- barrel shot out, crown worn out from cleaning- could not even hit paper at 100 yards with it

sent it out to some guy in Arizona, he rebored/rerifled it (just like we do to engines)- took it out to .358 so now it's a wildcat .358 x 57 damn thing is a tack driver now- put a new Cabelas synthetic black stock on it, sold all the old military parts except the action and trigger guard, nearly recovered the cost of gun in those parts- anyway wanted to save that original barrel with a rebore, there's like only THREE people in the country that still do rifle reboring, everyone else takes the easy way out and screws on a new barrel- but this one had the eagle standing on globe with nazi signs still stamped in it, so I didn't want to remove that barrel

old Mausers are like old engines, you don't throw them away, you rebuild 'em !

 

Try looking for KANO LABS in Tennessee-that's where it's made.