I bought this on a whim while in the John Deere dealer buying some other parts. Figured if JD was selling it for use on heavy Ag equipment it ought to do well enough in the shop. It did. MUCH better than PB Blaster for less $ and 1/3 the price of Kroil. I used it to free up a 60 year old vice that had been sitting outside in a barn yard for the past 15 years. A few weeks of keeping it soaked and persuasion with a rubber mallet and it came loose.

Anyway, pick some up and try it out. I've bought my last can of PB Blaster. You can't buy it at Wakky World, but its worth stopping by the JD dealer if you have one nearby. Good stuff

John Deere Penetrating Oil | WeGotGreen.com

 

According to the MSDS sheet this stuff is mainly a petroleum solvent and a surfactant (2 Butoxyethanol) which displaces water and also dissolves grease and oil. Personally, I rarely have weeks to wait for a penetrating oil to work. Aside from the usual suspects - Kroil, PB Blaster, etc. I've had really good luck with a 50-50 mixture of ATF and Acetone. For rusted nuts you could also try the old candle wax trick - it works more often than you'd think.

 

I've read the 50/50 ATF/acetone works better than anything. I've never had much luck with the candle wax truck.

 

Best stuff I have used was actually soaking in Stoddard solvent. I used this on the three point lift valve for my tractor, it was stuck badly from sitting for years. PB didn't touch it, but a day of sitting in a pan of solvent and it popped free with a light tap.

 

Dry ice is apparently another competitor -- at least for frozen exhaust bolts.

That's from a 2015 thread that -- link is on the bottom of this page (list of similar posts).

These are always interesting threads. I've read about the acetone-atf several times. It's supposed to work pretty well although you apparently have to mix it 'fresh ' for each use -- it's supposed to degenerate.

Usually somebody brings up a test found in a 'Machinst' magazine from 2007. Test shows atf/acetone as the vey best, but I've read a couple of things that say that the test wasn't very scientific ( tested on 3 bolts and used a questionable method to cause 'rust').

I did try the candle wax method once -- to my surprise it freed one that I had been fighting for a while. Maybe it was the final push.

hj

 

On my 65 F100, used Kroil over past several years, found applying to fittings the night before worked wonders. Currently removing the bed trim pieces, and rusted nuts for the tie down brackets that have been on the 65 for decades. Yesterday decided to give the 50-50 solution a try, applied some last night and this a.m. removed both trim and brackets and except for a couple rusted brackets removal with minimal effort. I am not sure it worked as well as the Kroil, certainly a lot cheaper. Most likely I will go with Kroil on fittings with high torque values.

 

Original formula for "homemade" penetrant was 1 part ATF to 1 part acetone to 1 part mineral spirits, kerosene, or turpentine. I use a lot of 50/50 ATF and acetone but in some cases the original formula does seem to work better. The original formula was created by C.E. Harris as a gun cleaner and was called "Ed's Red" and was an adaption of a formula by Col. Hatcher for the Army Marksmanship Unit and called Hatcher's formula 18.

 

Cool thread! For marine applications, PB and Kroil are our go-tos. The boats I work on all have JD gensets, so I'll order some up and give it a whirl. In the last year I've been introduced to Freeze Spray, which probably works just like dry ice, but seems to work best on frozen bolts that are not imbedded in a large piece of metal, i.e. small stuff. Not sold on the Freeze Spray as a must have, thought it is particularly useful in dissimilar metals, like a brass plug in a steel thread.

I've never heard of the candle wax method to remove seized bolts, how does that work?

 

That's an old one and it does work mainly on corroded nuts. Heat the nut and bolt with a propane torch until hot enough to melt a candle (paraffin not beeswax) then touch a candle to it so the melted wax runs down the threads. The heat and capillary action draws the wax into the threads and frees things up.

 

Very cool trick. I'll drop a candle in my bag of personal tricks. I'm giggling over here too.

See, as much time as crabbers spend at sea, we don't do candlelight dinners. It'll be an oddity. As it is I get sideways looks for keeping lipstick in that bag. I can imagine the looks. Hey though, tricks is tricks. It's how us old fellers make our way. Thanks!