Ultrasonic cleaning of a cox engine

Hi bnitram,when cleaning with my ultrasonic,I first get the water as hot as possible from the faucet,then I take the parts place them in a small ziplock plastic bag.Add denatured alcohol to the bag,enough to cover the parts,and place the bag in the hot water bath.Run for the maximum time ,remove parts,scrub with an old toothbrush and repeat,until clean.You use the same alcohol over again.When cleaned, rinse with fresh alcohol,dry and lubriccate with after run oil.When cleaning castor oil residue,heat and a good solvent are what you need.One nice thing about alcohol is that it can be used indoors and it is relatively safe as long as there, are no open flames.Hope this helps,D

You can place the parts in a glass jar filled with solvent or detergent of your choice, and put the jar in the water in the cleaner. That way you don't need to fill the tub with solvent and also all the crud that comes off the parts will stay in the glass jar, instead of messing up the tub of the cleaner. The glass will let the sonic waves through. Heat also helps, some of the better machines have heating elements, mine does not but it helps if you just fill it with hot water.

Also, the cleaner works kind of like a microwave oven, the more stuff you have in it, the less energy is applied per square inch of surface. So you may need to wash only 1 or 2 parts at a time.

Hope this helps. I have a cheap cleaner, got it on sale at Lidl , not very powerful, and so far I've only cleaned some jewellery, steel wristwatch bands etc. in it.

I´ve also a domestic ultrasonic cleaner machine and don´t clean nothing.

The best way to clean, is hot air and brush with metanol.

bnitram wrote:Hello everybody and merry christmas,
i get an ultrasonic cleaner at christmas and now i wanted to clean a very dirty TeeDee. Its a EMAG Emmi4 Cleaner with 40W at 42kHz. You can see the engine parts here:


First i try to use it with cold water and the included concentrate (EM-080) but after 3 or 4 runs(each 7min) there was no really changed. Then i tried it with hot water and citric acid. Same result. The dirt is realy hard and and will not dissolve.
Do you have any idea why it doesn't work ?
How do you clean your engines in an ultrasonic bath?

With best regards
bnitram

bnitram,one thing I've done with parts like that (after trying sonic cleaner) is to put parts in a Ziploc bag,get a good spraycan of carb. cleaner,spray bag full of cleaner and let set,it worked well for me.Also search threads here,theres a lot of good info on it.rat

KariFS wrote:You can place the parts in a glass jar filled with solvent or detergent of your choice, and put the jar in the water in the cleaner. That way you don't need to fill the tub with solvent and also all the crud that comes off the parts will stay in the glass jar, instead of messing up the tub of the cleaner. The glass will let the sonic waves through. Heat also helps, some of the better machines have heating elements, mine does not but it helps if you just fill it with hot water.

That's exactly how I do it Kari.
Bob

bnitram wrote:Hello everybody and merry christmas,
i get an ultrasonic cleaner at christmas and now i wanted to clean a very dirty TeeDee. Its a EMAG Emmi4 Cleaner with 40W at 42kHz. You can see the engine parts here:


First i try to use it with cold water and the included concentrate (EM-080) but after 3 or 4 runs(each 7min) there was no really ..........With best regards
bnitram

Not wanting to change the topic here, but when assembling the TeeDee do not put the silencer on it. TeeDee-s with sub-piston induction do not collaborate well with exhaust mufflers. Otherwise I see this is an old-stock 051 with stepped, thin wall cylinder. You have a chance to get a terrific runner from this heap of components put together.

Thanks for all the good ideas. I think i will test it with the glas in the cleaner. I will report on the results. If it doesn't work i will test another method.

@balogh
of course. You are right but the muffler was on the engine and i want too clean it too. After cleaning the muffler comes on another engine.

bnitram

I had been wondering if this would work also... I guess not really well... I'll just keep cleaning them up with fuel.

I have tried every trick that has come along since the beginning of time and still the old fashioned toothbrush with 25% fuel works the best. Heat is the trick for softening up really stuck parts. Tim Wiltsey posted years ago about boiling parts in water with a couple of drops of automatic dishwasher detergent added. These methods are all I use now.

If you own the engine and run it regularly the best thing to do is not letting it sit in fuel residue.

I do not remove my engines from my planes between flying sessions but clean them mounted. This is somehow part of the flying ritual and gives you a good feeling that the engine serving you is also taken care of by you cleaning and oiling it after the flight is over.

Small cavities and corners difficult to reach are cleaned with earbuds. 2 drops of after run oil then shroud the plane nose with a plastic bag...