Cleaning a transmission

[Tony_Urwin]

The transmission in my Pilothouse truck has been making a lot of noise, so last week I drove over to George Asche's place and picked one off of his tranmission pile. Ugly and covered in road guck on the outside, the gears and syncros looked good when I pulled the top plate.

George suggested I clean the insides with kerosene before installing it. So I have scaped and wire brushed the outside of the case as best as I could. I also used a screwdriver to scrape as much of the varnish off the inside of the case.

I bought a five gallon bucket of kerosene. So what is the responsible way to clean this thing? I could use rags to wipe off some of the worst muck from the inside of the case, then clean the gears and sycros with a toothbrush and kerosene. Eventually, I will probably want to dip the entire transmission into the bucket of kerosene to rinse out the rest of the trash.

How do I dispose of the kerosene? Any ideas how I can do this in an environmentally responsible way?

[PatS....]

Most municipalities have a household waste drop-off which usually includes paint and thinners and such, so I would think the kerosene would qualify. I know here it would.

The local oil recycler may also take it.

This weekend there was a bit of an explosion and fire in a house basement that was traced back to someone pouring something flamable in the drain a few houses upstream of the damaged house. A pilot light set the mixture off.

Hard to beleive people still do that.

[Tony_Urwin]

I ended up using about 4 1/2 gallons of the kerosene to completely submerge the tranny in a plastic bucket.

I think I'll put the last clean quart of clean kerosene in a clean container and strain the dirty kerosene back into the original 5 gallon metal container through a paint strainer. I'll save it to clean another transmission or differential before sending it to the recycler.

I usually use the citrus degreaser, but man, that kerosene really works for the tough jobs!