WD40 warning

[Unclenick]

Higgite's link is worth a read.

I did buy a gallon can of WD-40 years ago when I was Parkerizing things. It is less expensive than Brownells' water displacing oil, even though it is a brand name item.

I watched a YouTube video about penetrants, applying them to rusted lugs and measuring the torque required to loosen them and that found Kroil not doing as well as any other item tried, though it did cost the most. That annoyed me because I have two cans of it. The top performer, beating both Kroil and PB Blaster and several other items was Liquid Wrench pro series penetrants. The video is here. Skip to 8:25 to see the comparison data. The problem is, you can look at the data and see the highest torque needed to break a lug nut with Liquid Wrench is above the lowest value for other penetrants, so there is enough overlap not to have a great deal of confidence in the relative mean values, especially for the all the rest other than Liquid Wrench. He needs more than four lugs per test. Nonetheless, the whole experiment casts a lot of doubt on conventional wisdom about what to use as a penetrating oil.

 

[tangolima]

I for one believe kroil is much overrated. I even think it is no better than breakfree CLP. I don't care for WD-40 either for its supposed magic power.

-tly

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[hounddawg]

I use it for cleaning, guns, fishing reels etc. It works really well for flushing grit and grim out of crevices. I don't use it for a primary lube for anything though. 3 in 1 oil is my go to quick lube, also horribly old fashioned but has worked for me for 50 plus years.

I was career Military and would be deployed the wife used WD 40 on anything that should move but did not and duct tape on anything should not move but did. After 3 to 6 months overseas I always had about a 2 page honey fix this list when I returned. She literally made a cabinet door hing out of duct tape on one occasion

 

[reynolds357]

I for one believe kroil is much overrated. I even think it is no better than breakfree CLP. I don't care for WD-40 either for its supposed magic power.

-tly

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Kroil seems to me to be a good cleaner, but a poor penetrating or lubricating oil. It has a reputation of being a wonderful penetrant, but I think most of what people think is penetration is actually evaporation

 

[reynolds357]

Higgit's link is worth a read.

I did buy a gallon can of WD-40 years ago when I was Parkerizing things. It is less expensive than Brownells' water displacing oil, even though it is a brand name item.

I watched a YouTube video about penetrants, applying them to rusted lugs and measuring the torque required to loosen them and that found Kroil not doing as well as any other item tried, though it did cost the most. That annoyed me because I have two cans of it. The top performer, beating both Kroil and PB Blaster and several other items was Liquid Wrench pro series penetrants. The video is here. Skip to 8:25 to see the comparison data. The problem is, you can look at the data and see the highest torque needed to break a lug nut with Liquid Wrench is above the lowest value for other penetrants, so there is enough overlap not to have a great deal of confidence in the relative mean values, especially for the all the rest other than Liquid Wrench. He needs more than four lugs per test. Nonetheless, the whole experiment casts a lot of doubt on conventional wisdom about what to use as a penetrating oil.

I dont know how accurate any if that is. Take a high dollar torque wrench and go break the same identical nuts over and over. There is a huge variation in break pressure required. I put the lug nuts on my dump truck with a torque wrench. I break them with an impact. Some break in half a second, some break in 5 seconds, some never break and twist the stud off.

 

[HiBC]

WD-40 addresses the Stoddard Solvent myth on their website.
https://www.wd40.com/myths-legends-fun-facts/

Mr Higgite,No big deal,but I went to the site and read the WD=40 response.

The way I read it,it would not be quite accurate to say "WD-40 is made of Stoddard Solvent"

But we might be talking about the difference between Bourbon and Sour Mash.

Myth??? I guess it depends on how you look at it.

Anyway. No big deal. Hair splitting all around.

IMO,you would be close if you threw a pound of lard in a gallon and a half of diesel.

 

[jfruser]

I once brought a can of WD-40 into the same room as a gun I was cleaning and the gun instantly oxidized into a pile of rust. Sad.

============

As kid, my dad showed me to use WD-40 on nearly everything, to include firearms. Nowadays, I do like my more specialized solvents and oils and greases. But having a can of WD-40 in your tool box, on the road, when you need a lube or penetrant or protectant, beats my can of Kroil, tube of synthetic grease, mobil 1 motor oil, and suchlike back in my garage.

WD-40 saved my bacon a couple months back when I needed to open a shipping container. The lock was corroded and had I forced the key, it would have broken off. I also lubed the hinges and suchlike that evening. Next week I came back with some kroil and synthetic grease, but when things were on the line, WD-40 came through.

 

[ThomasT]

The biggest problem with WD-40 and guns is that most use too damn much of it. And no its not a very good lube. Not for heavy lubing anyway. And I have used it to clean many guns. Its seems to loosen fouling pretty good so it can be brushed out. No its not the best at anything but like others have said its another tool to have on hand.

And its no good at all on anything with a rubber seal. Spray it on the gas system in your 1100 and you will be replacing the rubber seal.

And if you have a can that no longer has any propellant in it don't throw it out if it still had the liquid in it. Turn the can upside down and make sure all the propellant is out and then near the bottom poke a hole in the can. DO NOT USE A DRILL. I know a kid who wanted to see what the rattle ball was in a can of paint and used a drill to make a hole. He nearly burned himself to death when the propellant was lit by the drill and spent nearly a year in the burn center.

So make a small hole and you can drain the can and save the WD-40 for small area lubing/cleaning. I have a pill bottle full I just used earlier tonight to stop the bluing on a grip screw I blued.

 

[CleanDean]

When you have bought over 12 other more modern products that ... Clean, Lube, & Penetrate or...
(Lube, Prevent rust)
WD 40 will still be good for killing Insects

 

[SHR970]

CAS# 64742-47-8 = Hydrotreated Naptha aka isoparrafin
CAS# 8008-20-6 = Kerosene

WD40 SDS states clearly that it contains 64742-47-8

WD40 DOES NOT contain kerosene. Just because the Hydrotreated Naptha compounds contain some of the same Cn H2n+2 compounds as kerosene does not make it kerosene. Same goes for Stoddard Solvent which is a defined blend of Cn H2n+2 compounds. Though chemically similar they are not the same. Just because you will find it called by one or the other name on the interweb thingy does not make it so.

 

[Metal god]

Just because the Hydrotreated Naptha compounds contain some of the same Cn H2n+2 compounds as kerosene does not make it kerosene. Same goes for Stoddard Solvent which is a defined blend of Cn H2n+2 compounds. Though chemically similar they are not the same. Just because you will find it called by one or the other name on the interweb thingy does not make it so.

I may have missed it in the thread but why does it matter if it does or doesn't have it . Are there pros or cons if it does , I don't know really anything about kerosene except my dad used it in are camping lanterns . I don't think I've ever used the stuff .

 

[TXAZ]

I’ve used WD-40 as a:
Water displacer
Protectant
Light lubricant (small parts vs gear grease)
De-corroder (sp?)

And in an extreme case:
Bug spray when attacked by wasps
Fire starter in a pinch


It’s all of these and probably more, although I haven’t seen it advertised as the later two.

By the way, water has been a noted lubricant for more than 5000 years. No reason most any other liquid including WD couldn’t be.

Here’s the data sheet if there is any question if it is a lubricant:
https://www.wd40company.com/files/pdf/wd_40tec16952473.pdf

https://www.wd40company.com/files/pdf/wd_40tec16952473.pdf

 

[Unclenick]

I don't know how accurate any if that is. Take a high dollar torque wrench and go break the same identical nuts over and over. There is a huge variation in break pressure required.

I do know how accurate it is—not very—and that's why I said he needs more than four lugs and nuts per sample.

In the early 20th Century, the Guinness brewery had a statistician and chemist and brewmaster named William Sealy Gosset. He was interested in getting usable experimental data out of small sample sizes. He developed something called the t-test for this purpose, which he published under the pen name "Student", so it is called Student's t-test. Among other things, it gives you the confidence you may have that two average values are truly different from one another and that the data isn't just giving you random differences. I applied this to the data in the video and found only about 10% confidence that Kroil makes any difference at all, but about 98% confidence that Liquid Wrench penetrant was better than nothing at all. So Liquid Wrench seems pretty certain to do its job.

Don't misunderstand the above. It doesn't mean the other products do nothing; only that the sample size is so small and the variance so large that the values measured cannot be relied on to prove that they work or how well they work. It certainly cannot be relied on to produce a ranking, except for liquid wrench, for which there is that 98% confidence it is better than nothing and 90% confidence it is better than the next best penetrant tested.

So the test in the video isn't a bad idea, just not properly designed to detect the effect of these products. To have the average difference he got between the control and Kroil confirmed, for example, his sample size would need to be about 100 control lugs/nuts and 100 Kroiled lugs/nuts. Presumably, the difference isn't really that small, but rather that the small test sample randomly makes Kroil appear less effective than it would average over a larger sample, or it makes the control breaking torque requirement lower than it would average over a larger sample, or perhaps some combination of the two. If he did, say, 30 of each, he'd probably get a bigger average difference than just 1% and therefore need fewer samples than 100 to get proof the Kroil helps as well as a valid ranking.

I should probably post that information in a YouTube comment. He asks for suggestions to make the testing better.

 

[Metal god]

Wasn’t his whole idea to use a small sample to get the results . Wouldn’t asking him to use more be counterproductive to the overall point . It sounds to me like you’ve proved his equation doesn’t actually work ??

 

[tangolima]

I have been using kroil for quite a while. I started with the belief that it was better than wd-40. But more I use it, the more I believe it is no better. Actually I was disappointed by it in more than a few real uses. When the last 2 cans are done, I will try liquid wrench pro.

I tried the ATF and acetone mixture too. It failed to show its magic power.

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[max it]

Note the lack. Of the words ‘oil’ or ‘lubricant’ on WD-40.


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[higgite]

Note the lack. Of the words ‘oil’ or ‘lubricant’ on WD-40.

Turn the can around and you'll see the word "lubricates" on the back. Is that close enough to "lubricant"?

 

[Swifty Morgan]

WD-40 has wax in it. Most people never see it in a bottle, but if they did, they would know that wax settles in the bottom. When you spray things with WD-40, the oil evaporates in a day or so, and then you're stuck with the wax.

The fact that it evaporates makes it useful for cleaning, because the things you clean dry out on their own.

I use mineral spirits to do what WD-40 does. Seems to work just as well. Hard to think of a reason to put it on a gun. It's good for removing cosmoline, but other things will work, too.

 

[Bill DeShivs]

WD 40 does not contain wax.
As I said- I have a 8+ year old plastic bottle that I sprayed WD 40 in. After the carrier evaporated, all that is left is light mineral oil. No wax.

 

[Swifty Morgan]

I have kept WD-40 in plastic bottles ever since I started machining, and a waxy substance has always settled in it. I could go to my shop right now and take a picture for you.