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Just realized my uncle's "just use oven cleaner on the engine block" advice was a disaster
My uncle Bob swore by spraying Easy-Off on greasy engine blocks to strip them clean. Said he'd done it for 30 years on his old Ford trucks. I tried it on a 1978 Jeep CJ5 I'm restoring. It ate through the paint and started pitting the aluminum intake manifold within 15 minutes. Had to pull the whole engine and sandblast it. Cost me $400 in extra supplies and two weekends. Anyone else get bad advice from a relative that set your project back?
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paige_martin1mo ago
Yeah, Easy-Off on aluminum taught me the same hard lesson.
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grantl941mo ago
Man I did the same thing with oven cleaner on a cheap aluminum baking sheet back in 2018. It literally stripped the finish off and turned the whole thing gray and pitted in like 3 minutes. The lye in those cleaners reacts with aluminum really fast and creates hydrogen gas, which is probably why you saw all those bubbles forming. Had to throw the whole pan away and learned to just use baking soda and vinegar for aluminum stuff instead.
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