How much time should it take to crock pot an engine, and what solution of anti freeze should I use?  I am not concernd with stains on an aluminum block..   Thanks

   Thanks T J, at what temp should I do this???

I use the antifreeze that is safe for aluminum.  Sometimes just a soak will do but heat helps soften all Jurassic castor oil. 

Undiluted, NO WATER.  Once again - NO WATER!

Understand if left in for more than a few hours, some engines will look like #@&^%)(!  - Fox may be the best example, they get just plain UGLY (and I even like them).  I get mine pretty hot, it usually cleans a lot in an hour or two.

Probably best to check often, but the stuff works wonders.  Good luck!


Dennis

I use the cheapest antifreeze undiluted and normally cook on low 10-15 hrs. On really blackened ones it usually takes longer...like a day or two. Pulling the engine out every couple hours and brushing or using a wood skewer to scrape between fins and crannies helps speed it up. I tried soaking in cold antifreeze a couple days and it didn't do anything. I never tried high heat so can't say whether it works better.

* adding that I've crockpotted a lot of engines and never had a discoloration...Fox, McCoy, OS, Kraft, RJL, Cox, Magnum, Torpedo and probably others I don't remember.
* also stopped rinsing them with anything immediately after removal unless ready to run them. I left a junk Fox 40bb on my bench for about a month to see if it rusted or did something weird. Nothing happened, not even rust on the cheaper Fox bearings...

  A word about "discoloration" when crock potting engines. You would be surprised at how many older engines had painted crank cases. What you are seeing as discoloration is the natural aluminum and not the silver paint any more. I have never had a bad experience, nor known anyone that had a bad experience cleaning cruddy engines this way. I have even taken some and just flushed them with fuel, bench run them a bit and put them in a model with no effects. Depends on the engine.
  Type at you later,
  Dan McEntee

       Gil

        I use this stuff rather than antifreeze because a twenty or so minute soak will do it, not overnight. The good news is that all the Dollar Stores carry it for, you guessed it, a Buck.

       Ara

  Guy's thanks for all the tips and advice, it came out clean's as a hounds tooth...

Undiluted, NO WATER.  Once again - NO WATER!

Understand if left in for more than a few hours, some engines will look like #@&^%)(!  - Fox may be the best example, they get just plain UGLY (and I even like them).  I get mine pretty hot, it usually cleans a lot in an hour or two.

Probably best to check often, but the stuff works wonders.  Good luck!


Dennis

Yes, water, 50% is what I use with Prestone" anti freeze. Then I rinse my parts in ACETONE!

Oil and put away or run then oil and put away.

Jerry

Ara

Do you use LA Awesome full strength or diluted.

       Leo

         Full Strength.

         If I have an engine with caked on goo but without baked on varnish, the LA will clean them up without prolonged soaking just by using a chip brush. Below are photos I've posted before. Some are medium heat crock potted and some are brushed clean.

       Ara

ATTENTION!!!

IF the engine to be crocked used castor oil... THEN crock potting w/antifreeze will dissolve the very important varnish seal between the piston and sleeve. You will be rewarded with noticeably reduced compression.

I learned this the hard way.

Andre

           I wonder why it is printed on the front of the bottle of Awsome,”Dilute before use. There is also a dilution chart on the back of the bottle.

                                                             Frank McCune

         I'd guess because of this stuff.

         Ara

Antifreeze is formulated with anti-corrosion additives. These are consumed (reacted) during normal use. Using old antifreeze in which these additives are exhausted means that you are prone to corrosion during cleaning. More so due to the heat which accelerates corrosion. Even more so due to dilution with water. If you choose to use old, used up, diluted antifreeze, be sure you are cleaning your old, used up, dilapidated engines.

In industry, antifreeze may be recycled by filtering out all the crud and impurities and then putting in a new charge of anti-corrosion additives. Hopefully, that is where your used antifreeze is going when you turn it in to be recycled.

Using clean antifreeze along with heat is the most effective, safe cleaning method out there. Antifreeze with a lot of dissolved carbon and junk in it will clean slowly. If you are having poor results, it may be due to methods and materials. There are many other ideas for cleaning engines, and guys will use what they will use.

If your engine has a worn out piston liner fit after you clean it, it had a worn out piston liner fit before you dropped it into the pot. (Unless you took some kind of abrasive or polish to the pieces.) If the engine still runs without slowing down during the flight due to varnish, then keep running it. I don't quite understand the panic over cleaning a tired engine though. If you can get a wheezing Fox started, it will varnish up again. Just make sure you using all castor and run it hard.

Dave

A few more comments--

There are two common types of coolants in this family:  propylene glycol and ethylene glycol. Propylene is even less toxic, but also not quite as good at the job. There are lots of different "color" coolants, but it does not seem that they correspond exactly to one of the two chemical types. They are actually dyed to get what you see.

We ran tests on various coolants for a Navy aerospace project. In the case of ethylene glycol, it does not have an easily identifiable freezing point when mixed in usual proportions. It kind of turns into a sludge that resembles a slurpy except it has a gooey aspect. It appears that perhaps some of the water comes out of solution and begins to freeze.  The literature from the manufacturers mostly gives the temperature at which this sludge begins to form at around -60C. To get there, you need at least a 63-64% EGW mix. And yes, the freezing point seems to go back up as you increase the EG above ~63% by volume.

About 5% of the volume constitutes the inhibitors. These begin to lose effectiveness at really high temps (>250 deg F), and the stuff degrades much more rapidly when vented to the open air (ie. in a crockpot) at temps above 150 deg F, so set your crockpot on low. It will be plenty hot enough to clean engines.

It is better not to cook brass parts along with your aluminum parts. Especially at higher temps as the corrosion inhibitors don't like it.

If you don't leave the parts in the bucket for a week, you have very little risk of corrosion--unless you use old, dirty, diluted antifreeze.

As a bit of tragic info regarding EGW, the Apollo capsule fire was caused by an EGW leak. It is a very odd quirk of EG that in D.C. voltage above something like 20V, a splashing or partially wetted conductor will ignite. Cars don't have this problem because the voltage isn't there. After the fact, further studies were done and the Air Force began to find cases of burned connector pins where de-icing fluid (EG) leaked into unsealed connectors.

The Divot