What is a good way to clean the K-Frame, front end, diff, etc.?

I have all these parts on the garage floor and they are heavily coated in old dirty grease, oil, other crap, etc.

Thanks

I usually scrape all surfaces with a flat-bladed paint scraper (rigid putty knife) first, then hit it with Gunk engine degreaser or similar and rinse with water. Clean up the scrapings before hitting with degreaser+water or you will have a colossal mess on the floor/driveway.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

I've had good luck with Purple Power post scrapping of caked on crud. might take a few applications, and some brushing, but a lot cheaper than spray can degreaser. A big improvement cleaning if you have a means to connect garden hose to hot a water supply.

I have two feeds to an outside hose bib valved separately to both hot & cold water that can supply water temperatures between 50* and 120* to a hose.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

I also do an initial scraping to get the heavy duty crud off. Then I generally use a fiber disc or wire wheel on an angle grinder, die grinder, or electric drill to whisk off the rest of the junk. It's also good for stripping old paint and rust from things like axles and brake drums that see hard service.

Coin op car wash, preferably with hot water. Alternatively: https://www.harborfreight.com/1500-watt ... 63042.html

Oven cleaner. The regular kind, not the "fume free". It will remove grease, paint, gunk, and grime.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Very effective, but use in a well-ventilated area only unless you like ammonia fumes. I'd recommend rolling the car out to the driveway if it's in a garage.

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Somehow I ended up owning three 1964 slant six A-bodies. I race one of them.
Escape Velocity Racing

That ain't no ammonia, it's sodium hydroxide (lye). Ventilation is essential, as is breathing protection (dust mask so you don't inhale sprayed droplets), skin and eye protection. I prefer the non-aerosol, trigger-spray Easy Off in the yellow bottle.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

At Dan's recommendation, I tried this on a few parts that had 44+ years of grime on them. The oven cleaner worked fabulously...however, as he had warned, its use DID necessitate the repainting of parts, as it ate all the paint off also, lol. Good luck!

Shawn

Gunk or oven cleaner, both work well, but the pressure washer is very helpful. Even with the pressure washer, i think it took me nearly 3 hours to get all the stones and crud out from inside the K-frame ('73-76 spool type). Even with the pressure washer, I used a toothbrush, various sticks, a screwdriver, etc. to reach the nooks and cranny's and help move the dirt out (pressure washer wand didn't fit directly in some areas).

Then came the rust removal, see this thread: https://tinyurl.com/ydd9bt7d

Brian

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https://tinyurl.com/yynpj4v2

A really bad idea.
Coin Op owners hate this. So do the people that come in after you.
I have personally seen several car washes close down because of it.
It makes a big mess of their building and even if you wash down the floor and walls it still leaves a greasy film everywhere I.E. safety hazard.
It is also extremely bad for the drainage system.
Ask a city/sewer worker, they hate it too. Worse than pooh.

I use the woven plastic thread sheeting from the local lumber yard to keep the mess contained.
The stuff lumber comes packaged in. They are usually glad to get rid of it.
I go out in the back yard and have at it.
Then simply blast it with cold water using my pressure washer.
The cold water keeps the grim from turning to goo and sticking to everything.The pressure gets the parts remarkably clean. The free sheeting gets rolled up and delivered by me to the local landfill.
Oil comes out of the ground, oil goes back into the ground.

I have a buddy who builds race cars and he always uses spray on oven cleaner. He got me to using it years ago and it works! It usually strips the paint off along with it, and does not play well with aluminum. At all. I remove as much gunk as possible with a putty scraper and spray a thick coat of oven cleaner, then wait 2 hours and hit it again. An hour later I hit it with the pressure washer and viola! Sparkling clean. It only really works well when the parts and air temperature are warm, the warmer the better.

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If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

I used to have a microbial cleaner that worked really well. I think it was called Oil Muncher. I can't find it now, but it would be similar to this product:

http://greencleanxl.com/

The microbes eat up the oil. I used it on an engine block and didn't have to do much after washing it down.

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