tiger1964 

OK, this AM is my first use of the Harbor Freight ultrasonic cleaner (looks like the photo in post #1) my wife bought me six months ago. Reading about the Ball Jar approach, I liked that and we had two unused ones laying around. So, I dumped small parts into the small jars and added a solution of hotter water and Simple Green HD (supposed to be aluminum-safe) in the jars to cover the parts, filled the reservoir around them to the max marking, and set the longest time setting of 480 seconds and the “Heat” setting and off she goes. Noisy bugger, ain’t it? Annoying buzzing sounds.

So, is this overkill? Or underkill, if there’s such a word? Multiple 480-second sessions?

I need to do rather a lot. I am restoring three old bikes for friends, all at once. Right now I have 26 “red Solo” cups of small parts, as I disassembled each derailed and brake caliper as much as possible, and keeping each separate so I am nt trying to figure out what goes where later. Bigger stuff like cranksets, handlebars, etc. won’t fit.

First batch, a Campagnolo headset and a Campagnolo Nuovo Record RD, mostly pretty darn good after one 480 second session. That said, some items needed “wiping?” To remove grunge. A couple of items, like the headset bearing in cages, and the RD lower pivot spring, still has thick grease (everything got a cursory wipe down upon disassembly) and gets a second session. Expectations? After a second session, the headset bearing look and feel as-new, the RD pivot spring less so (and I see the RD pulleys have the infamous crack).

And how many sessions before replacing the fluid, I presume one determines visually by color of the remaining fluid. I was considering trying to filter the solution through coffee filters but I figure that adds hours to the process time, and it looks to be a lot of sessions.