What do you use in your ultrasonic cleaner?

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Apr 1, 2020
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Location
Pacific Northwest
My ultrasonic cleaner doesn't get used a lot, mainly just for cleaning OPE carbs. I've tried a number of cleaners in it like dish soap, PineSol and Simple Green, etc. and wondered what other people use and prefer?

The last few times I did as I read online somewhere and put my parts in a clean glass peanut butter jar and filled it with enough gasoline to cover them. Then, I filled the ultrasonic cleaner with boiling water and put the jar in the water. It seemed to work OK.
 
“Soap and water solution” seems a little vague.
The soap product is called "Awesome"

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Zep Citrus degreaser concentrate. Best stuff I have found to use in the ultrasonic cleaner. It's about $15 a gallon at Lowes.
 
In our metallurgical laboratory we sometimes use a product called Micro-90. It's specifically made for ultrasonic cleaning. It's also expensive... $90 per gallon the last time I ordered it. It's mixed with water to make a 1% solution.

I also use it in my antique radio hobby. It's taken heavily tarnished parts and made the brass nice and shiny again. It's revived dead switches with heavy tarnish back to working condition.
 
I have a few projects i'm working on, and just tried out my Ultrasonic cleaner with Zep Citrus.

1) Cylinder head from a Kohler LH775 with a dropped valve guide.

before
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after
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The head is more or less ready for surgery, extremely clean after some light scrubbing, drilling a set screw to hold in the valve guide, just waiting for amazon to deliver loctite.

2) Assortment of nuts/bolts from a Go Kart.

before
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after
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About half of the bolts/nuts look good enough to reuse, i'm very pleased.
 
Just dawn dish soap for me, I'm usually just trying to rid parts of oil and dirt residues. With a temp of 40 degrees Celsius or higher it works well.
 
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