Another use for Lemishine

[Pistolero]

For seriously tarnished brass, tumbling can take forever, and on the old site there was a very fruitful discusson
of using chemical means to clean the tarnish without risking damaging the brass, and without dangerous and toxic
chemicals, or hard to find stuff. What a lot of us settled on, based on the replacement of nitric acid cleaning of SS
to "passivate" it before final use with citric acid (which is a huge portion of lemonade, you can literally drink it safely)
was to use citric acid. Various sources were discussed from canning suppliers to health food stores and finally
Lemishine, a dishwasher additive powder readily available at grocery stores. I got a huge bunch of new
but tarnished LC brass a while back and tried tumbling a test batch and it wasn't cleaning up real quickly, so I broke
out the Lemishine and cleaned 100 cases to really shiny in about 10 minuts in just enough warm water to cover
and about 1/2-3/4 teaspoon of Lemishine. The neat thing is that you can stick you hands in it, or even spill a bit
here and there with no harm. It reverses the oxidation reaction so it does not remove material. It turns
out that when cartridge brass oxidizes, the copper part of the alloy goes to brown copper oxide (like a penny),
but the zinc part (30%) oxidizes and apparently just goes away. When you reverse the oxidation, you get
a nice pinkish copper sheen to the oxidized parts, VERY thin, tumbles off in 10 minutes with a capful of Nu Finish
car wax in a tumbler full of corncob media. Brass is spectacular when done.

So - now to the "other use". I will bet that pretty much all of us have a host of small gasoline engines around,
and the darned ethanol in the gas causes the carbs to corrode up internally if you leave fuel in it over the winter.
I have gotten quite good at pulling down th e carbs, cleaning out the corrosion and crud and getting them back
running. However, a few times it has taken quite a bit of cleaning, maybe twice or more to get the
carb running correctly. Of course the correct solution is to drain the carb entirely, including the fuel remaining
in the bowl after it "runs out of gas", and/or use Stabil, and/or use no-ethanol gas. But I screw up and forget occasionally.
After trying to start the snowblower a couple weeks back, prepping for snow, it wouldn't light off, even though
I was certain that I ran it out of fuel at the end of last season. I pulled the carb off (real PITA on that one) and
of course it had been left with about 3/4" of fuel remaining in the bowl and the bowl was corroded as was
the main jet. OK, managed to worry out the bass jet and it was plugged solid. Poked it out with wire, cleaned
up everything else, reassembled and it started right away. BUT it really wouldn't stay running for more than 1
minute if I took the choke off all the way. Run fine with 1/4 choke, but that isn't right. So, pulled off the bowl,
pulled the jet and it looked fine. So I was thinking that I may need to drill it out a touch to enrich the mixture.
I used pin gauges to measure the hole at .030", and decided to calculate what size I needed to increase fuel
flow by 10%. I was surprised to know that .0014 increase in diameter would increase the fuel flow by 10%!

This got the gears turning and I wondered how thick the obvious brown tarnish on the jet really was?
Maybe .0014?
Took a cat food can, put in 1/4 tsp of Lemishine and filled with water an put on gas stove to heat. Dropped
the jet in and let it come to a boil, took off heat an put aside to cool for 15 minutes. Jet was sparkling.
Put it back in -- no need for choke, runs great, starts on first pull.

Keep this trick in mind. I have another engine, on my pressure washer that is doing the same trick after
carb cleaning 3 times. The main jet will get a Lemishine boil out in the springtime before house cleaning time.

Bill

 

[popper]

I use it to clean the Moen cartridge valves, just put it in the US cleaner for a while. Remove the rubber gasket first. A new one is $30. Same thing with drippy shower heads.

 

[Pistolero]

Excellent info, had not thought of cartridges. Have replaced them, will give this a try next time.

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

I have been playing with switching 4 cycle engines over to propane.
No need for carb's. Direct injection behind the choke plate. An inline ball valve acts as your speed control.
There are a lot of Utube videos on the how to's.

 

[Pistolero]

That would work for some engines, but for many, packaging up propane and refilling would
be inconvenient, I would think. Certainly solves the deterioration in storage of fuel issues entirely, though.

Bill

 

[Rick]

Would sure be a huge PITA to me to need to keep filling propane bottles for the yard equipment. Fuel deterioration is the sole reason the standby generator runs on propane but I don't need to keep running to fill little bottles for that, just order it delivered 500 gallons at a time with no delivery fee. Can't begin to imagine what the delivery fee might be to come out and fill the lawn mowers. Every week.

 

[fiver]

lemi-shine does have lots of other uses.
before I found it I was using a package of lemonade flavored kool-aid [which is mostly citric acid with some flavoring added] and a couple tsp's of lemon juice to clean my brass.
now I use the lemi-shine.
I also pour about 4 tbs of it in the water softener about once a week right before it does a regeneration.
citric acid is used in some home water softener applications without the use of salt.

I might have to try pulling down the old lawn mower and cleaning the carburetor out with a soak this spring.
it seems to be a contest between me and the boy's to see whether they can break it or if I can keep it going.

 

[Pistolero]

It reverses oxidation really nicely, and harmless to hands and eyes.

I tend to agree on the small engines. Stationary genset sounds perfect w/ propane, no storage issues. I have two big
ride mowers, weed whacker, leaf blower, pressure washer, snow blower and a couple of chain saws. This
ethanol induced corrosion is a big PITA, but for mobile equipment, I don't think propane is the answer.
Esp the mowers which burn a bunch of fuel during the grass months, mowing about 7 acres, lots of trees and
a couple of creeks to cross/mow around. Can't have the mowers down for carb issues.

Bill

 

[Brad]

What is this "mowing" I keep hearing about?

 

[Pistolero]

Hmmm. Grass does grow in your part of the world, Brad, so I thought you would
be part of the club.

If you live in a condo or apt, no need, but in the country on some acreage and mowing
becomes necessary if you want to avoid the wild look and make it harder for the ticks
to get onto you. Hard to shoot sitting or prone without mowing, too. Even in suburbia,
mowing is usually necessary unless you have kids to handle it.

Bill

 

[fiver]

when we had the pasture we just worked a deal with the neighbor to come cut and bale it.
I wasn't mowing 20 acres, and the baled grass just about seen either three cows or two horses through the winter.

 

[Brad]

We moved to a largely wooded lot. No grass in back of house. None. Nada. Zip.
We have more sq ft of house than we have grass.
My wife mows every couple weeks. Grass grows slowly in shade.

Now leaves, we get those. We dump them across the street now. First year in the house we filled over 50 bags with them.

 

[Rick]

What is this "mowing" I keep hearing about?

It's what ya do in a T shirt sitting on your hieny while enjoying an ice tea. That's opposed to bundling up like an eskimo and breaking your back.
.

 

[Brad]

Rick, the real key to snow is to make sure it falls while you are at work and the wife is home. She then gets out the snowblower and clears the drive for you before you get home.
She thinks I have an in with Ma Nature. I keep pretty quiet, I appreciate that she is willing to do the drive.

 

[Ian]

Bill, for your two-stroke engines, use the canned, premix gas from the home store or autopart store. Sure, it's $20/gallon but how much do you really consume in a year? Zero ethanol, good oil, fuel stabilizers included, easy to use the quart containers, what's not to like?

For your 4-cycle small engines, go to your local Bobcat dealer or other equipment dealer and see if they will sell you straight gasoline. It, too, will be expensive, but it contains no ethanol and doesn't corrode all the aluminum carburetor parts of your riding mowers etc. I can't wait until small engine fuel injection is mainstream, it will solve a lot of problems.

The information on oxide accumulation of carburetor jets and needles is good, I've run into the main-jet choking problems on a few Briggs engines and always attributed it to the ethanol fuel having less energy per gallon, thus needing a 1/4 or so choke to run full-throttle, but your findings may prove to be the real culprit.

 

[fiver]

some gas stations will sell ethanol free gas too.
we have one here that sells ethanol free premium and one that sells 88 octane.
the boat, 4wheelers, and mowers all get it, the mustang gets it too.
the extra couple of dollars to fill those up isn't even noticeable.

 

[Pistolero]

Good deal Brad, but when I bought land in the country, I knew what it meant. I'll mow
to be able to shoot in the back yard, have a three bay shop, and a separate barn and
two car garage on the house.

I have a station that sells ethanol free gas here, not a prob getting it. I have made it a standard
procedure to switch to it in the mowers in Sept, and keep the chainsaws, weed whacker and leaf
blower premix filled ONLY with ethanol free, but this is all this last season's improved procedures.
I will still run the 80 or more gallons of normal (ethanol contaminated) gas through the mowers from April to Sept, then
go to ethanol free with Stabil as ALL that will be in my gas cans from Sept on.

Should eliminate the prob. The gas in the snowblower is also ethanol free, and will stay that
way. Also, pretreated with Stabil.

In GA where my brother lives, he uses no ethanol fuel in his boats, after I have rebuilt his outboard
carbs about three times. They gouge you $3 a gallon instead of $2 to leave out the ethanol. Fortunately
here it is only about $0.40 extra a gallon.

Maybe we can finally get this stupid idea cancelled and go back to real gas in everything.

Bill