[Boatanchors] Contact Cleaner

[Bob Scupp]

Stanley and All-

Thank you for sharing your tips on your home brew
cleaner-lubricant.

One of our members of the New Mexico Radio Collectors
Club in Albuquerque is Jim Steuber. He had his own
radio-tv repair shop in Chicago after WWII. He also
has much part-time experience in vintage repairs and
restoration since then. 

He recommended that I try Connoisseur's Silver Jewelry
Cleaner if I need cleaning only. After doing some
phone calls and searching, I found it is sold at the
jewelry counter of any Wal-Mart store. It comes in an
eight ounce plastic container for less than four
dollars. I tried it using cotton swabs on some badly
oxidized battery contacts on an early Philco
transistor radio. Then after letting it work for
several minutes, I wiped it off. While it did not cure
the problem, the battery contacts were left in
pristine condition.

I guess it depends if one wants cleaning and
lubrication or just cleaning only.

This is just my two cents.

Bob K5SEP

--- Stanley Adams <stanleybadams at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I have played around with making my own.  And I
> tried some regular 99cents
> per quart transmission fluid on a couple of radios
> that I repaired for some
> customers and found that it worked well.  It did all
> of the jobs I required
> of it, cleaned the element, and lubricated the
> component.  One of the
> problems with all contact cleaners is that the oils
> do not stay around
> extremely long and quickly evaporate, just like
> WD-40 does when you use it
> in regular lock, hinge and other situations. 
> Transmission fluid also does
> not show signs of the other bad issue with some
> cleaners and that is
> 'stickiness'.  So these are just some thoughts from
> my experiences.
> 
> Stanley Adams
> Memphis
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com