Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I have to disagree with the statement that WD-40 is not a lubricant. It’s 25% mineral oil which is a lubricant. It’s not necessarily a great lubricant but it does reduce friction.
I would also argue that it isn’t a degreaser, either. It will remove grease because it is 75% mineral spirits but it leaves behind the stuff you are trying to remove. Just about any chain lubricant will remove the old grease since most of the have 50% or more of aliphatic distillates (a high falutin’ way of saying “mineral spirits”) along with the lubricant. The solvent forces out the old lube (or at least dilutes it) and leave the new oil behind.
cycommute, I took a look at the MSDS for WD-40 and you're right. It has some heavier hydrocarbon fractions that could suit as lubricants. Not ideal, but better than nothing.
I think we agree that its difficult to call something both a hydrocarbon-based lubricant AND a degreaser! It will leave some of the grease behind. I did a quick check of the aliphatics in WD-40, and all of them are higher boiling fractions than min spirits. More viscous, less able to penetrate. They will dissolve most of the even higher boiling stuff like grease but they'll leave a grease film.
But this is somewhat "How many angels fit on the head of a pin" argument on my part. You're right: WD-40 can clean some crud off AND it can lubricate to some extent. But IMHO min spirits works better and more completely for cleaning, and real lubricants - even good old Tri-Flow - works better for lubrication.
Regarding Dupont (my old employeer, btw) Chain and sprocket cleaner, I looked that up too. You mentioned your thought that it was pretty much min spirits. It's close, but again uses a slightly higher boiling fraction. Because DuPont usually tried to market stuff with superior value (and get money for that value) I wanted to find out if there were any value adds in shown in the MSDS. One component in the DuPont product and not in min spirits is Dipropylene glycol monomethyl ether (5-10%). This has some solvating properties not found in min spirits, and the mix probably works a bit better, but not world-changing. Perhaps the most interesting thing in that product was citrus terpenes, which is mostly d-limonene, the active ingredient in Goo-Gone, my favorite product for removing adhesive residue (From price tags, etc). It's less than 1%, but that stuff packs a wallop if you have something that min spirits won't touch.
I strongly endorse your point about the amount of "green" cleaner needed to remove heavy grease gunk off of parts. For chains, I put some min spirits in a cleaned, dried V-8 bottle, and put the chain in. A good shake, and most crud comes off. Rarely not everything comes off. I can take the chain out, put in on cardboad, and use an old toothbrush on the wetted chain. Takes almost everything I want off, off. Reimmerse the chain, shake, pull the chain out, wipe dry with rags, and hang to drip-dry. Then apply wax, oil, or DuPont Chain lube (a dry wax/Teflon lube, seems to work great).
I can let the crud settle in the original V-8 bottle, decant the clear min spirits into another, clean bottle, and I'm good to go for the next chain cleaning. Minimum use of and release of hydrocarbons to the environment.
I'd have to run several buckets of hot water and "green" detergent to get that grease and crud off, and it would all go into the sewer. Residential sewer systems are not optimized for hydrocarbon treatment, so this is pretty pernicious.