Will CLR Clean a Crusty Carburetor? 

You are doing great videos. Bordering on a project farm cleaning materials, kinda like your intake manifold cleaning. Good Stuff, love it. Very useful info! Thanks for sharing!

Unfortunately once you use any type of acid or aggressive solvent. The protective coating/plating is gone and even if the carb is spotless will corrode up very quickly in the future, especially if stored in a moist/humid climate or used with any ethanol type of fuel. The Rochester carbs are really bad about corroding if you remove the plating, I have seen it before many times. That's why carbs are not worth sandblasting or using an acid-dip unless you plan on spending big bucks and having them re-plated.

Wonder if CLR will help with cleaning my Edelbrook aluminum intake manifold. The engine cleaner and mean green did ok, but not that good. Even scrubbed it with a brush and scotchbrite pads. Getting ready to paint it.

The absolute best product I've found for cleaning parts like this is Simple Green undiluted full strength and it's also non toxic and made with all natural products!! Would be great to see what results you would get with it!!

With Aluminum you have to be careful with really alkaline cleaners. It will turn them black. I tested a few junk carbs years ago.

So I have a Carter Comp. AFB carb that had sat for 3 years with ethanol fuel in it. It was completely dry and stuck. There was a black coating along all the bottom surfaces of the bowls and throughout. It was about a 1/8" thick. This black coating was very hard and would not come off with a scraper even after sitting in carb cleaner for an hour. I watched some youtube videos and ran off to the dollar store and bought vinegar, pinesol and cheap Coke. Soaked it in the vinegar for 4 hours and it didnt even touch it. Pinesol next. Nothing! Then I tried the Coke overnight. Worked great! Scrubbed everything out, sprayed all holes with carb cleaner and blew out all the holes with compressed air. Slammed a new kit in it and its working and looking great today. Ball burnished finish looks like brand new! And this carb is 35 years or so old. Only run non-ethanol fuel in it and its happy. So am I. Moral of the story? Dollar store Coke overnight worked better than anything else!

I use it to clean some of my carburetors. Especially Holleys. But watch it ,and don't leave them in it to long.

What would make it even more interesting is to now put some of the parts into an ultrasonic cleaner with either CLR or some other cleaner. There are a couple of interesting videos on YT on building an ultrasonic cleaner with a palm sander and they are surprisingly effective. You really need to read the comments on those videos as they are very helpful.

I watched a video the guy used concrete cleaner diluted it's muriatic acid. Worked extremely well.

im a carb rebuilder and im using pine soil ont dirty carb but i was wondering how CLR would react thank you

I have a Holley crustacean that was at the bottom of the Pacific for a couple hundred years. I'll skip the CLR and try a one-two punch of Easy Off and Vinegar. We shall see.

What can you do to prevent the ethanol issue? Besides ethanol free .

CLR contains "muriatic" (hydrochloric) acid so be sure your carb isn't high zinc alloy. I partially dissolved a pair of old Triumph Amal carbs learning the difference.

Oh Oh, Brian's breaking out the ballpeen hammer that can't be good, lol, just looked like both of those carburetors were pretty far gone, i would think because of the CLR taking off the protective coating it's probably not a very good product to use on a good carburetor, i do have a question for you Brian, i store the 55 truck in Eastern Washington with the 1406 what should i add to the gas, thank you buddy

So prior to this experiment what do you use ?

Try evapo rust in a heated ultrasonic cleaner!

I agree with Brian below, even a treatment of neutralizer won’t remove the acidic treatment, also acids and aluminums do not go well together….test somewhere first

I like the intro 😂

30 minutes isn’t anywhere near long enough. I use to work on EDM Wire machines. The process of cutting metal with a .010” thick wire causes very fine metal particles and they bond to everything. And I mean bond. Everything is submersed in water. I would disassemble the whole machine (internal) and soak everything in CLR overnight. Some things I would put into a sonic cleaner with CLR. After that, I would mix baking soda with water and put the parts in that for a few minutes to neutralize the CLR. CLR would kill the deionized water used in the machine. I think for something that is corroded as bad as the carbs, you would be better off soaking it down with like PB Blasters, (or similar) for a few days first.

Should have just bought some carb dip

Yep lm surprised, looking good on the outside.

I believe that weird powder is aluminum oxide. Looks like sandpaper covered in aluminum oxide.

Typically you’d have to leave it soaking longer than 30 minutes! Soaking in carb clean you’ll usually leave it in over night! I mean if the carb is junk what is there to lose?

I almost quit watching the video when I saw the hammer in the beginning of the video… But then I realized it was a junk carburetor anyway…😂 I wasn’t to impressed with the CLR… I think I’ll save that for the tub and shower head. Lmao I’ve got a running/driving Ford F100 pickup and I’m gonna disconnect the fuel pump and fill the bowl with seafoam and pump it through the carb a few times and let it sit and see if I notice a difference. It’s running but I think it could be better. If nothing else it will loosen most of whatever is in there up for when I get ready to take it apart.

Man you used to CLR on the wrong thing. At an EA to it and CLE AR some space in your wallet and go buy a basic Edelbrock carburetor replace it. Okay have a little bit fun with that. It would be nice if there was some substitute for the harsh carburetor cleaners. But like you said on those two nothing was going to help them come back to life. When you run across that magic cleaner let us know. I've got a little one barrel I believe it is on a 57 Chevy 235 straight 6. It's a beautiful car for only having 38,000 original miles. And people who like patina would love this. It's an Old government car that I bought a friend of mine who pulled it out of a dry Creek that was sometime wet down in Kentucky. The car set there since the mid 70s and the hood according to some of the old boys hadn't been on it ever since it was parked. So the carburetor and engine just sat there open to the elements. That would be a challenging will it run haha. The car came at the package deal. But did you two and a half inch trucker straps to tie the body down because there was no longer attached to the frame hardly at all. So if you got a magic buffing compound to make that one look new again. Oh I'm just having a little fun with it. Just like that old carburetor this old record be good try things out on. Enjoy your channel

Clr states not to be used on aluminum

Boil in Pine-sol.

yikes! the one was a boat carburetor. an underwater boat. it was a submarine carb lol

With the price of CLR you could have bought a new o rebuilt carb

U find that carb in the bottom of a lake lol

I'd bet the toilet bowl cleaner would work better

When I saw you bust out the hammer I knew this was not good.

I'm going to say CRL won't work.