Veggy goo

[Jens]

With temperatures back down to normal levels, I spent a good portion of the day in and around the engine cave to remove bits and pieces for cleanup. Things like the generator slide, bits from the mounting frame, the drip pan and things like that.
I have spent a fair bit of time doing multiple oven cleaner applications and applications of 'Marine clean' but the veggy goo is a real bugger to get off. It looks like the best way to clean larger areas such as the engine mounting frame, is by sandblasting and repainting the entire thing.
Tomorrow I will try to get the frame out of the cave and sandblast it. After that I will need to scrape off goo from the concrete mounting pedestal and then I can think of gradually bringing stuff back into the cave.
Ahh progress ....

[veggie]

Turpentine.....

veggie

[billswan]

Jens

We are all pulling for you jens don't give up, besides what else would you do with your time?

hope the reassembly goes well.

Billswan

[bschwartz]

I've decided not to clean off veggie goo (except for moving important parts).  I consider it rust proofing

[cognos]

I'm sure you all realize this, but just in case... Vegetable oils can turn quite acidic if they sit around for a while, especially in heat and humidity, along with fungal and bacterial action... so may function as quite the opposite of rustproofing! Some can even get so acidic that contact can cause skin burns. This happens fairly frequently with "rancid" oils, particularly coconut oil, but can happen with other vegetable oils as well.

A particularly 'famous' example of this was in the 1970's, with an Amway cleaner ... it contained coconut oil, which became acidic, and burned a few people who used it, sometimes just opening the cap was enough, causing a fairly large US recall. Or as large as the 20 or 30 people who used Amway products in the '70s...

[bschwartz]

Heat we have..... humidity is a rare commodity here in the desert southwest 

Is the polymerized goo acidic as well?  I have layers of the stuff on my steel filtering barrel, but haven't noticed rust, or any other changes to the exposed (but goo covered) steel after about 2 years.

[cognos]

Goo-d question. Perhaps all goo is not created equal.

It wood be impossible to say, without a sample to test. You can do this with a piece of pH paper, or a pool test kit.

Put a sample of the goo in question in a small bottle, add some water. Shake well, allow to settle. Separate the sample as well as you can, try not to test the oily part of the sample. Test the water for pH.