hey guys ChrisFix here today I'm going to show you how to make your own
penetrating fluid that works better than most of these products on the market
I've used PB Blaster kroyle liquid wrench and wd40 all these products are
pretty decent I'd say my favorite is the kroyle followed by PB blaster and then
liquid wrench and include a wd-40 because everybody has WD 40 but it's not that
great of a penetrating fluid and while all these are decent I wanted something
that works better
so I picked up one of these old-fashioned Oilers for a few bucks and
now i'm gonna show you how to make a penetrating fluid that not only works
better than all these penetrating fluids but is actually cheaper to make so
penetrating fluid should break down rust prevent future rust add a layer of
lubrication and have a very low viscosity so you can easily move into
tight places like rusty bolt threads the lower the viscosity the more penetration
oil has so that means we're going to need an oil with a super low viscosity
such as automatic transmission fluid and a solvent that could break down rust and
gunk such as acetone transmission fluid is low viscosity as i already explained
it's great for lubrication
you can see I have a quantity here that is exactly half of the volume of this
container is going to be using half automatic transmission fluid half
acetone transmission fluid is really low viscosity which is great for this
i'm using full synthetic so I have the smallest molecules possible so you get
good penetration this automatic transmission fluid is dextran and
Mercron and that type of transmission fluid is really good for this class
again
it's really low viscosity you don't have to use synthetic i'm using it just
causes a little bit better but you can get the cheap automatic transmission
fluid and that would work perfectly fun as well this just works a little bit
better
the acetone and i'm using is actually premium grade doesn't really matter
either
again it's just a little bit better but you could just use any type of acetone
acetone is highly volatile which means it evaporates fast and it's a really
good solvent
it's an organic compound and is highly flammable although i'm sure it's not
good for you in high quantities the body could handle small quantities without
toxicity
basically this is nail polish remover I would still use gloves when you're
working around these chemicals though just to be safe
besides acetone and I've heard people use paint thinner or mineral spirits
I heard this isn't as good though I've always just used acetone and I've also
heard people use kerosene which again I heard isn't as good but it's another
option
so now let's get to the actual process of making the penetrating fluid so
you're gonna want to take the cap off and the correct mixture that
are going to be using is a 50-50 mix so this volume of automatic transmission
fluid is actually exactly half of what is in here so I'm going to pour that in
right now
now with the a stone you want to be very careful
it's going to melt the plastic cup quickly if you have a metal cup or
something the talent to pour this into that would make your job a lot easier
you can see what it did to my other cup just ate right through it
I didn't go to eat through it that quickly but it takes about 15 seconds
and it's toast
like I said that stone is a good solvent right so we're going to want to fill
this up with acetone to right about here and i'll give us fifty percent acetone
and fifty percent automatic transmission fluid which is the correct ratio to make
the ultimate penetrating fluid
good work quickly
there we go
I guess if you really want to you can just put the a stone directly into here
because I said I filled it halfway with the automatic transmission fluid so the
other half would be acetone giving a 50-50 ratio now will screw on the cap
here
make sure you get a good seal acetone likes to evaporate quickly so make sure
you have some type of penetrating fluid container oil container oil or whatever
you like to call it that has a seal on it so that it maintains that 5050 ratio
penetrating fluid and automatic transmission fluid and that with it
sealed
just shake it up a little bit before you use this you always want to shake it up
because the a stone in the automatic transmission fluid tend to separate
their two different densities so but once you mix it up like that it's ready
to go
and also try not to get it on your skin or breathing the fumes but that goes
without saying for all penetrating fluids as you use this keep it away from
any open flames because it is flammable
also keep it off any paint in any plastic because I mean you saw what it
did to that plastic cup
so this combination of fifty percent a stone fifty percent transmission fluid
has been used by mechanics and machinists for a while
it's really cheap to make and actually machinist workshop magazine tested these
penetrating fluids up on the screen or their results
well i'm not sure the approach was very scientific it's at least more proof that
this fluid mixture actually works and it works well you can see that the
different types of penetrating fluids on the left and the average load to loosen
the bolt is on the right with no penetrating fluid the bolts took over
500 foot pounds of torque to loosen up
as you go down the line you can see that coil was the best from the ones they
tested that are store-bought but then the automatic transmission fluid and the
a stone mix it only took 53 foot pounds of torque compared to the over 500 foot
pounds of torque it took with nothing on it
so this mixture does work and i've been using it for a while so i decided to do
a little experiment on my own
it's nothing scientific there's not a large sample size or anything
I was just curious to see how well that penetrating fluid that we just made
works compared to the ones that you could buy including croyle which is
really good stuff so I have liquid wrench coral and then our homemade
penetrating fluid the test here has all three of the same bolts and what I'm
going to do is I'm going to put a puddle of penetrating fluid on the top of these
bolts the nuts are screwed down the same amount and what's going to happen is the
penetrating fluids going to penetrate its going to seep down and i'm curious
to see how far it goes
and i'm going to give it a two minute time limit because you figured when
you're working on your car and you put penetrating fluid on there
you want to put it on wait two minutes and then start taking your bolts off
so this is my test let's see how well the penetrating fluids compare
so I'm going to try to get all three of these on quickly then
good
good i'm going to start the timer on my phone and wait two minutes before we
check
so we're coming up on two minutes so now let's take a paper towel at the top here
and absorb all the fluid so there's no more penetration into the threads
I'm going to take the bolt off on each one
so here are the three bolts
let's look at our penetrating fluid that we made first with this one
it penetrated down to 10 threads which is past the nut which is pretty good now
with our coil we could see that the penetrating fluid got one two three four
the Reds down and now with our final penetrating fluid the liquid wrench
we could see it got one two three four four threads down as well
so with this simple fast non-scientific test we could see that these to do about
the same with penetration and our homemade penetrating fluid did really
well
again this is just a backyard tests not scientific or anything it was just kind
of interesting to see so i just want to show you guys one last thing real quick
with our homemade penetrating fluid watch how fast this fluid goes into all
the little cracks and looks like right in there
watch this I'm just gonna put it right on the edge here we're going to just go
in and it goes down the threads and around
now i'm going to do on the opposite side so you'll watch again look at it just
absorbs right in that is awesome
if you make your own penetrating fluid let me know how it works and if you use
a different recipe and don't mind sharing leave it in the comments below
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