Bike Gremlin

I often remember a billboard from my elementary school:
"There's no shame in not knowing - there's only shame in not wanting to learn."

Anyways, after decades of wrenching, I've decided to give odourless mineral spirits a go. I've been using diesel so far.

The problem/question:
The stuff is next to impossible to source in my country (apart from 250ml bottles that cost an arm and a leg).
Fortunately, thanks to some good people, I'm able to source stuff from German Amazon (amazon.de).
I've done a fair share of Googling and using the translation, but I would prefer to be sure before spending money.

So, my question is:
Can someone post a link to the product on German Amazon (preferably a three, four or five-litre package to save some money)?

I'll give myself the liberty to mention cyccommute - hoping it's taken as a sign of recognition and respect, and not as bothering.

This is what I think might be the stuff (amazon.de links):

1) The price looks a bit steep for this one:
AMI Turpentine oil replacement odourless - 1000 ml/can

2) This one has a nicer price, but I'm not 100% sure it's the more refined odourless stuff:
KLUTHE Lösol Turpentine Substitute 3 Litres

If that's not it or someone knows of a cheaper package/brand, I'd be grateful.

Basically, I'm looking for something that cleans and degreases at least as well as diesel, but that evaporates at least a bit faster with a bit less oily residue - and can be used to dilute mineral oil (make it less viscous) - without being as highly flammable and toxic as petrol.

Thanks in advance for any tips and help.

Relja Still-Dumb Novović

BTinNYC

Just about any Paint Thinner from a paint store/hardware store will be mineral spirits.

soyabean

No solvent is faster than gasoline.

Besides wiping with it, I soak a lot of stuff in it, and removes years of caked up hardened grease in minutes, a common symptom of bikes I obtain to flip.

And then it goes into the ultrasonic.

Basically I can restore anything to "new" in about 20 minutes.

I budget time accordingly to my seasonal quotas.

Hondo6

OP: this site's "Mention" function doesn't appear to work correctly. If you mention someone by selecting them from the pull-down list that appears when you type their user ID, that does not seem to notify the individual.

However, if you put the "@" sign in front of their name - as in " @cyccommute " - the individual does seem to get notified. I have no idea why one method works and not the other.

The problem appears to have existed for some time; not sure if/when it will be fixed.

Hondo6

Suit yourself. Just please do so at least a kilometer away from me.

When still young and naive, I ended up far too close for comfort to a gasoline flash fire once - fortunately, without significant injuries (I only got a bit of hair singed). I was lucky.

I'd prefer not to tempt fate - or to repeat the experience.

Iride01 

Same for me. Gasoline seems safe enough until you find out why it's not safe. It's the way the fumes you can't see behave and the volatility of them. I went about 30 years till I had the experience with it that I never ever want to have again. Thankfully it didn't cause injury or much monetary damage. But the visual was spectacular and worthy of a Hollywood movie with lot of billowing flashes of flame.

HillRider

Your #1 is OMS but, as you note, the cost is high. Your #2 appears to be mineral spirits but not the odorless variety. It will work fine as a degreaser and can't smell worse than diesel.

BTW, the warning against using gasoline/petrol is very well founded. Yes, some people get away with it but the consequences of any mistake are very bad. Not worth the risk.

Bike Gremlin

Apology in advance if it's a stupid question:

Option #2 will be nearly identical in terms of cleaning and evaporation speed - just will smell stronger (the smell is not a problem for me)?

As for petrol:
In my childhood, I've had a fair share of playing with petrol. I knew the consequences, but it was sanctions and wars, so you work with what you have.
I was careful enough so no accidents - but I would never recommend petrol, nor use it when I have a choice (and for decades now I've had a choice - diesel if nothing else).

Now I'm just spoilt, can afford something I expect to be a bit better, and want to give it a go. But on a budget: I'd recommend diesel before petrol. Petrol is highly toxic and highly flammable, and humans have a proven track record of making mistakes from time to time. Yes - petrol is a lot better at cleaning and degreasing, no doubt. I would just argue that the extra risk is probably not worth it (at the cost of being a hypocrite, as I have used it for years).

soyabean

Yawns.

Don't worry about it. I'm good. Really.

cyccommute 

The AMI solvent translates to turpentine substitue, odorless. Mineral spirits has a bunch of other names, one of which is mineral turpentine. I would say that it is what we in the US call odorless mineral spirits.

My German is too rusty to interpret all of the information on the Kluthe product and the search function on the Kluthe website doesn’t seem to work all that well with english. One of the pictures in the Amazon listings says “<0.2% Aromaten Kohlenwasserstoffe” which translates to aromatic hydrocarbons. Cyclic compounds is another name for aromatics which are the “odor” part that has been removed from “odorless mineral spirits”. I’m reasonably certain that the Kluthe turpentine substitue is odorless mineral spirits. Either would work. Buy some nitrile gloves.


Turpentine is derived from trees, specifically conifers, and works much the same way as the petroleum distillate does but with a distinct odor. The two materials have very little in common chemically.

More chemical trivia: The name Kohlenwasserstoffe is literally coal water stuff but water stuff is hydrogen so the name means coal hydrogen.

dedhed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spirit

​​​​​​https://cool.culturalheritage.org/wa...2/wn29-204.pdf

Bike Gremlin

Thank you very much for taking the time to look into it. I appreciate it.
Another question:
In terms of evaporation speed, is the turpentine (the listed product) close to the petroleum-based OMS?

Also, apart from the odor, is there any other important difference between the odorless, and the... well, non-odorless mineral spirits?

Relja Klein-In-Der-Hose Novović

Edit:
Thanks to dedhed I also gave "testbenzin" search a try and found this:

3) A bit less expensive than 1), and probably petroleum-based:
Lukas Studio White Spirit 1000 ml [Toy]

cyccommute 

From what you have posted, neither of the substances are “turpentine”. They are petroleum distillates that can be used like turpentine but they are substitutes. You can think of turpentine as a “natural product” while the petroleum based solvent is the “artificial” solvent. Turpentine is made either by collecting tree sap and distilling it (like maple syrup) or by destructive distillation of pine wood, usually from stumps and slash (unusable limbs). I don’t have any experience with true turpentine so I can’t speak to how fast it evaporates. Petroleum distillates evaporate relatively fast with the odorless variety evaporating a bit slower than the “odored” type. The evaporation rate is related to the flash point with naphtha (white gas, Coleman fuel, etc.) evaporating slightly faster since it has a lower flash point…<-18°C vs 20°C to 50°C. Odorless mineral spirits tends to be less flammable and thus a bit safer to use. Compare that to the flashpoint of petrol which is -40°C which means it will ignite in most any condition we humans can experience.

The other difference between odored and odorless mineral spirits is the presence of aromatic hydrocarbons. Benzene, and to a lesser extent xylene and toluene, is a chronic, or long term, toxin . In sufficient quantities it can be an acute, or short term toxin, although that requires vast quantities. The combined aromatics are called BTX and petrol contains up to 25% BTX with benzene in concentrations up to 2% but it is the more concerning chemical when it comes to health effects. Even odored mineral spirits and white gas contain 0.1 to 1% benzene which is still a concern. Use gloves when handling it.

Testbenzin translates to “solvent naphtha” which is odored mineral spirits. Technically it is called “low flash” mineral spirits with the flash point closer to 20°C. It will work but is a little more toxic. Like a broken record, use nitrile gloves. They should stand up to about 15 minutes of exposure in a 0.127mm (5 mil) thickness.

SoSmellyAir

Being in southern California, I think I am in a similar situation as Bike Gremlin, i.e., the sale of "real" odorless mineral spirits is regulated. The version which is approved for local sale by the California Air Resources Board ("CARB") is described as "slow to dissolve" on the packaging and "milky" by users who reviewed the product. From various reviews on the web (including here on Bike Forums), I understand that the CARB-approved version is sub-optimal for preparing chains for waxing. However, I was able to order a quart of "real" odorless mineral spirits from a local art supply store, at a much higher price than from the local hardware store.

cyccommute What do you think of others' suggestions to buy naphtha / camp fuel (e.g., from REI) to use as a degreaser instead?

Hondo6

As I said previously: suit yourself.

So long as your >1km away, it's only potentially your funeral - not mine.

Bike Gremlin

Again, thank you very much for the explanation.

So, "for dummies:" the option #2 should do the job?

Nitrile gloves go without saying - but it's wise that you stressed that (I hadn't known about that always). Thankfully, 100-pair packages are locally available at a reasonable price. I don't like wearing gloves, can't get used to them, but when working with solvents, brake fluid, or when using power tools, I make sure to wear the appropriate protection.

sean.hwy

Is it the gas water heater in the garage that makes using gas/diesel so dangerous ?

There's like a billion+++ auto mechanic garages with gallons of gas and or diesel to start cars or clean something stored in the shop.

same can be said for all the people the own a gas lawn more etc...


I have been using mineral spirits for cleaning my chain because it's supposed to be more eco friendly to the environment.

cyccommute 

I’m not sure of what solvents the CARB restricts but if they don’t restrict camp fuel, that is suitable with a little more in the way of precautions than when using odorless mineral spirits. I do find it a bit a musing that CARB bans mineral spirits which, to be fair, is a volatile hydrocarbon but still allow for the use of gasoline which, even with the modern recovery systems in place, still accounts for more VOC release.

A water soluble cleaner that I’ve discovered recently that works extremely well on very greasy parts is Armor All Extreme Wheel and Tire Cleaner. It’s way more effective than Simple Green and a bit cheaper.

cyccommute 

It’s the volatility of gasoline (petrol to most of the rest of the world). Gasoline evaporates very quickly and forms a denser than air vapor that flows a bit like water. The extremely low flash point that allows a car to start in very cold temperatures means that it doesn’t take much to ignite it and, once ignited, the vapor will burn back to the liquid source…often with a lot of speed and possibly force. It’s just not worth using since there are safer alternatives that do just as good a job.

Mechanics at garages don’t use gasoline to wash parts but use parts washers that are either high flash (high ignition point) mineral spirits mixtures or, now, water soluble mixtures. An insurance company would probably not pay a claim if they learned that mechanics had used gasoline to wash parts.

Finally, it’s not the “eco friendliness” aspect of using mineral spirits that is the reason for using it. The safety aspects are far more important. An insurance company may not pay to have your house rebuilt if they find out you’ve been using gasoline to wash bike parts…and saying so on-line in an open forum is a good way to admit to using gasoline in an improper manner prior to the insurance claim.

cyccommute 

Correct. Option #2 will work.

SoSmellyAir

Of course! Banning OMS only upsets artists who paint with oil brushes and those of us in the Cult of Chain Waxers. Banning gasoline would ground the world's fifth largest economy.

But does the use of Armor All Extreme risk hydrogen embrittlement?

ign1te

What exactly happened? It seems unlikely that gasoline could turn dangerous when just cleaning bike components.

Trakhak

User name checks out.

And: "turns dangerous"? When is it not?

Iride01 

Long time ago I was working on my truck parked in the driveway in front of the garage. I had a little shallow pan of gasoline I was cleaning parts in next to the truck. Single car garage so I'd backed the truck out to have room. I don't remember how long a time period it'd been with the pan of gasoline sitting there, but from the truck I was looking back at the rear of the garage. There is a electric water heater in a closet there and the door was open. The closest has a 4 maybe 6 inch step up to get into it. And it was at least 22 feet away from the front of the garage where I was.

Any how, I see a ball of flame erupting from the closet and then a flame running down the middle of the garage and to the pan of gasoline. Along with a big wooshing sound as the flame billows out in one of those big clouds like you see in Hollwood films. I laid a nearby piece of plywood across the pan to snuff out the fames. Or maybe it was a nearby garbage can lid. This was over 30 years ago.

Probably all this happened in an instant, but when such things happen to me it's like my mind is a high speed camera capturing everything and a million things running through my head about what to do.

Any how, no damage done other than some stuff showed a little scorching. I consider myself very lucky that nothing was in the garage to catch fire. And since that day, I've sworn off using gasoline to clean anything, although I used it for such for almost 30 years. Mineral spirits does just as well and doesn't have quite the issue with vapors as does gasoline.

Although I'd heard the stories about gasoline vapors crawling along the ground and going up small rises to find an ignition source, I dismissed them as bunk since I had never experienced it. But that particular day I did experience it!

Hondo6

Yep. Doesn't take much to ignite gasoline vapor/air mixture at the right concentration. A tiny spark in a switch or thermostat can be enough.

Thankfully the garage door was open. Had it been closed, the resulting pressure pulse in an enclosed space could easily have done structural damage (or not, depending on just how much gas vapor was present and "flashed"), making it impossible to put out the fire before it spread to the rest of the structure. It doesn't take much overpressure to seriously damage many structures.

Yeah, I used gasoline occasionally as a cleaning solvent decades ago too. But one bad experience with a gasoline flash 35+ years ago convinced me that using gasoline that way wasn't exactly a good idea.