In the process of rebuilding my Gradall, I've been trying to pinpoint the sources of some leaks by trying to remove some BAD grease build up on hoses and housings. I've tried a few different products (brake clean, acetone on rags, etc) and had very minimal success. This stuff is awful. After doing some research, I settled on Xylene as a possible good solvent for synthetic greases. I got some from the Depot and a spray bottle (No. 2, HDPE, should last a little bit). Boy, does this stuff do a JOB on fluid build up. WOW. Honestly, if you want to remove some heavy grease build up, get some Xylene. However.....after an hour of waging war on the back of my torque converter, a friend (and chemist) suggested that this may have been VERY bad for the seals, hoses, and o-rings in the areas I had cleaned. Research online suggests that Xylene is similar to brake clean and has the same warnings about rubber parts. So my question is this... Has anyone had seal/hose failures after liberal degreasing with a heavy solvent like brake clean or Xylene? The Xylene worked like a charm....better than anything I've tried. I wiped everything dry (nooks and crannies are up for grabs). I know in theory it may (or may not) be fine.....so I'm wondering if anyone has actually seen rubber part failures from a general degreasing operation with a good solvent. Thanks for any thoughts!
Yair . . . Dunno mate but xylene is a pretty common coatings/paint thinner and evaporates like crazy, I think it's unlikely you have done much harm. Cheers.
We had a drum of xylene around just for that purpose too. Never noticed any adverse affects on anything we used it on. Tough on skin and grease.
A decent pressure washer will work wonders also. We use a Hotsy with heavy degreaser soap and it removes all the buildup really well. You can get portable models that combined with a small 500gl tank do the cleaning on the jobsite also. We kind of got away from using xylene due to cost and being tough on skin too.