Aquaticbob
Well-known member
[highlight]Welcome to my semi-scientific tool cleaning test. The goal here is to find the best cleaning solution for taking grease off of tools in a quick and effective manner[/highlight]
I picked all these cleaners up at my local home depot, and used all cleaners with a shop towel except the wet wipes. I like having clean tools in a clean working area, but I hate to clean. This came about because I want to devise a quick easy method to clean all my tools after a job and get on with my day.
Judging categories:
Cleaning Effectiveness (1-10): This is pretty straight forward, the cleaner is graded on how good of a job it did at cleaning the tool. This purely relies on the before and after condition of cleanliness.
Ease of Use (1-10): How easy was the cleaner to use on the tools, also how much elbow grease was required to get the job done. Also if the cleaner required any additional steps other than wipe down this takes note of.
Material range (1-5): Does this cleaner even work on all materials your tools might be made of? Once again, pretty straight forward.
Overall score: 3-25, 25 being the best while 3 means they shouldn't even sell this product in stores.
So without further adieu, lets meet the competitors!
Clorox Disinfecting wipes: It mentioned great on kitchen grease, which might as well be the same as car grease so what the hell, right? I think my favorite part about these was they came as pre-moistened wipes in a plastic canister. This was great for me as a potential quick cleaner, now it just needed the power. I gotta say these performed well for not being a pure degreaser, however their performance wasn't my favorite. After the ease of being able to just pluck a wipe out of the canister, it was downhill from there in my opinion. The wipe would want to fold onto itself, and then just stick and not want to work how I wanted it to. It did do pretty well at getting the caked grease off, but it took me 3 wipes to do what other cleaners had done, which took far longer than the other cleaners. The upside was there was no limitations that I saw on what this could be used for.
Cleaning Effectiveness: 6
Ease of Use: 6
Material range: 5
Overall score: [highlight]17[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Clorox-Citrus-Blend-Disinfecting-Wipes-75-Count-4460001628/100674311
Simple Green Professional-Grade Heavy Duty Cleaner: Now this is something I can get behind! It says professional and heavy duty right on the product name, so it's gotta be good right? Seeing as simple green gets used by many a company as a degreasing or car washing solution, I can understand why you would think it ought to be great. Well you are right, it did a damn good job! Now the downside on it was I could ONLY find it in the 128fl oz(aka 1 gallon) container, which is the big honking container. Now had this have been in a smaller container, or even more preferred offered in a similar container as the clorox I would have most likely given up here and thrown everything else in the trash. This stuff performed extremely well, especially considering I used it on the soft grip, and the shaft of the screw driver and it got all the grease. It took a bit of solution on a shop towel (it was a ***** to get a small amount of cleaner out of the gallon jug onto a towel), and did require me to dry it with another towel, but hell it was impressive! A good amount of elbow was required, which is pretty much where this product loses it's points. Once again, it didn't say anything tool material wise I couldn't use it on. I'm also going to give it a little more bonus as it is non-flammable, non-corrosive, and bio-degradable (the last part I'm unsure how with oil being in it, but whatever).
Cleaning Effectiveness: 10
Ease of Use: 7
Material range: 5
Overall score: [highlight]22[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Simple-G...de-Heavy-Duty-Cleaner-2110000413421/100550784
Greased Lightning: Go greased lightning, go greased lightning! Actually I really hate musicals, and that is going to extend to this product as well. This product was by far my least favorite of them all. I think the most important thing to mention is THIS CANNOT BE USED ON ANY FORM OF ALUMINUM. I'm not sure why, they just say don't do it, as well as it can't be used on a variety of other materials that don't really matter. The spray came out as basically a thick foamy solution, which took a lot to get soaked into the shop towel. It also didn't perform nearly as well as the clorox or the simple green did. I had to put a lot of elbow grease into cleaning off the hammer, and even then I wasn't able to get some grease off of the head of the hammer (I did a bad job of picturing this now that I realize it). I think the large amount of elbow grease required was because it was suppose to spray and soak, but I ain't got time for that. I have to say it did a good job on the less thick grease areas, and where it was smooth. It also left a residue after I dried it off that made the tool slick. The biggest downside to this product was it's material range, I also forgot to mention no wood apparently either. I can't see using this product at all in a garage setting if it will harm aluminum.
Cleaning Effectiveness: 7
Ease of Use: 4
Material range: 1
Overall score: [highlight]12[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Greased-...pose-Cleaner-and-Degreaser-30101GRL/202820675
GooGone Spray Gel: You might be wondering why I have 2 GooGone products here, I just decided they seemed different enough. The gel was a little thicker, and appeared more orange and potentially a slightly different formula than the bottle. This stuff like Greased Lightning sprayed out as a foam onto the shop towel. Now it didn't foam quite like greased lightning, only a little so I didn't have to use a whole lot. I also failed to use this on very dirty tools, but I did like how it cleaned off any little trace of grease. These ratchets just had a little grease on them from being held in a dirty glove, and it's hard to see any grease on them in the pictures. You can see on the towel however there is a little grease. All it took was like one wipe over with the towel and the grease was gone. I did have to dry it extensively with a dry towel to get the googone off of the ratchets however. The GooGone bottle didn't say there were material restrictions so this was good.
Cleaning Effectiveness: 8
Ease of Use: 7
Material range: 5
Overall score: [highlight]20[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Goo-Gone-12-oz-Tough-Task-Remover-Spray-Gel-GGHS12/100191884
GooGone Pro Power Remover: This can also be referred to as Magic Juice in a Bottle. I used a small amount of this to effectively clean a tool I've maybe cleaned once. It was a plastic gasket scraper that had grease caked onto it from all sorts of different things. Anyway, this was very impressive stuff. As it also came in a bottle (at least it was a lot smaller), it wasn't as convenient as spraying it onto a towel. I sort of saturated the towel with it semi on purpose. This stuff took virtually no elbow grease to clean however, and that was amazing to me. I just was wiping it down and the grease was coming right off the tool with extreme ease. I was rather impressed with it! Now the only downside is GooGone can be harsh on plastics from what I've heard, so that might not be the best use, but I'll have to look into that further. This was the easiest stuff to use, but maybe slightly less effective than the simple green. I also didn't need to use another towel to dry the tool off, it seemed to evaporate pretty quickly. I did miss a spot in the last picture in the middle there because I was so caught up in how amazing it was working.
Cleaning Effectiveness: 8
Ease of Use:10
Material range:5
Overall score: [highlight]23[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Goo-Gone-8-oz-Pro-Power-Remover-1743/100399110
TL;DR
If you are looking for a good solid tool cleaner, look no further than either GooGone Pro Power in a bottle, or a gallon of Simple Green Pro HD with some shop towels. If you are in a pinch clorox disinfecting wipes work great but have their limits.
I picked all these cleaners up at my local home depot, and used all cleaners with a shop towel except the wet wipes. I like having clean tools in a clean working area, but I hate to clean. This came about because I want to devise a quick easy method to clean all my tools after a job and get on with my day.
Judging categories:
Cleaning Effectiveness (1-10): This is pretty straight forward, the cleaner is graded on how good of a job it did at cleaning the tool. This purely relies on the before and after condition of cleanliness.
Ease of Use (1-10): How easy was the cleaner to use on the tools, also how much elbow grease was required to get the job done. Also if the cleaner required any additional steps other than wipe down this takes note of.
Material range (1-5): Does this cleaner even work on all materials your tools might be made of? Once again, pretty straight forward.
Overall score: 3-25, 25 being the best while 3 means they shouldn't even sell this product in stores.
So without further adieu, lets meet the competitors!
Clorox Disinfecting wipes: It mentioned great on kitchen grease, which might as well be the same as car grease so what the hell, right? I think my favorite part about these was they came as pre-moistened wipes in a plastic canister. This was great for me as a potential quick cleaner, now it just needed the power. I gotta say these performed well for not being a pure degreaser, however their performance wasn't my favorite. After the ease of being able to just pluck a wipe out of the canister, it was downhill from there in my opinion. The wipe would want to fold onto itself, and then just stick and not want to work how I wanted it to. It did do pretty well at getting the caked grease off, but it took me 3 wipes to do what other cleaners had done, which took far longer than the other cleaners. The upside was there was no limitations that I saw on what this could be used for.
Cleaning Effectiveness: 6
Ease of Use: 6
Material range: 5
Overall score: [highlight]17[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Clorox-Citrus-Blend-Disinfecting-Wipes-75-Count-4460001628/100674311
Simple Green Professional-Grade Heavy Duty Cleaner: Now this is something I can get behind! It says professional and heavy duty right on the product name, so it's gotta be good right? Seeing as simple green gets used by many a company as a degreasing or car washing solution, I can understand why you would think it ought to be great. Well you are right, it did a damn good job! Now the downside on it was I could ONLY find it in the 128fl oz(aka 1 gallon) container, which is the big honking container. Now had this have been in a smaller container, or even more preferred offered in a similar container as the clorox I would have most likely given up here and thrown everything else in the trash. This stuff performed extremely well, especially considering I used it on the soft grip, and the shaft of the screw driver and it got all the grease. It took a bit of solution on a shop towel (it was a ***** to get a small amount of cleaner out of the gallon jug onto a towel), and did require me to dry it with another towel, but hell it was impressive! A good amount of elbow was required, which is pretty much where this product loses it's points. Once again, it didn't say anything tool material wise I couldn't use it on. I'm also going to give it a little more bonus as it is non-flammable, non-corrosive, and bio-degradable (the last part I'm unsure how with oil being in it, but whatever).
Cleaning Effectiveness: 10
Ease of Use: 7
Material range: 5
Overall score: [highlight]22[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Simple-G...de-Heavy-Duty-Cleaner-2110000413421/100550784
Greased Lightning: Go greased lightning, go greased lightning! Actually I really hate musicals, and that is going to extend to this product as well. This product was by far my least favorite of them all. I think the most important thing to mention is THIS CANNOT BE USED ON ANY FORM OF ALUMINUM. I'm not sure why, they just say don't do it, as well as it can't be used on a variety of other materials that don't really matter. The spray came out as basically a thick foamy solution, which took a lot to get soaked into the shop towel. It also didn't perform nearly as well as the clorox or the simple green did. I had to put a lot of elbow grease into cleaning off the hammer, and even then I wasn't able to get some grease off of the head of the hammer (I did a bad job of picturing this now that I realize it). I think the large amount of elbow grease required was because it was suppose to spray and soak, but I ain't got time for that. I have to say it did a good job on the less thick grease areas, and where it was smooth. It also left a residue after I dried it off that made the tool slick. The biggest downside to this product was it's material range, I also forgot to mention no wood apparently either. I can't see using this product at all in a garage setting if it will harm aluminum.
Cleaning Effectiveness: 7
Ease of Use: 4
Material range: 1
Overall score: [highlight]12[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Greased-...pose-Cleaner-and-Degreaser-30101GRL/202820675
GooGone Spray Gel: You might be wondering why I have 2 GooGone products here, I just decided they seemed different enough. The gel was a little thicker, and appeared more orange and potentially a slightly different formula than the bottle. This stuff like Greased Lightning sprayed out as a foam onto the shop towel. Now it didn't foam quite like greased lightning, only a little so I didn't have to use a whole lot. I also failed to use this on very dirty tools, but I did like how it cleaned off any little trace of grease. These ratchets just had a little grease on them from being held in a dirty glove, and it's hard to see any grease on them in the pictures. You can see on the towel however there is a little grease. All it took was like one wipe over with the towel and the grease was gone. I did have to dry it extensively with a dry towel to get the googone off of the ratchets however. The GooGone bottle didn't say there were material restrictions so this was good.
Cleaning Effectiveness: 8
Ease of Use: 7
Material range: 5
Overall score: [highlight]20[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Goo-Gone-12-oz-Tough-Task-Remover-Spray-Gel-GGHS12/100191884
GooGone Pro Power Remover: This can also be referred to as Magic Juice in a Bottle. I used a small amount of this to effectively clean a tool I've maybe cleaned once. It was a plastic gasket scraper that had grease caked onto it from all sorts of different things. Anyway, this was very impressive stuff. As it also came in a bottle (at least it was a lot smaller), it wasn't as convenient as spraying it onto a towel. I sort of saturated the towel with it semi on purpose. This stuff took virtually no elbow grease to clean however, and that was amazing to me. I just was wiping it down and the grease was coming right off the tool with extreme ease. I was rather impressed with it! Now the only downside is GooGone can be harsh on plastics from what I've heard, so that might not be the best use, but I'll have to look into that further. This was the easiest stuff to use, but maybe slightly less effective than the simple green. I also didn't need to use another towel to dry the tool off, it seemed to evaporate pretty quickly. I did miss a spot in the last picture in the middle there because I was so caught up in how amazing it was working.
Cleaning Effectiveness: 8
Ease of Use:10
Material range:5
Overall score: [highlight]23[/highlight]
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Goo-Gone-8-oz-Pro-Power-Remover-1743/100399110
TL;DR
If you are looking for a good solid tool cleaner, look no further than either GooGone Pro Power in a bottle, or a gallon of Simple Green Pro HD with some shop towels. If you are in a pinch clorox disinfecting wipes work great but have their limits.
, But for everything else, it tends to work pretty good, to clean sockets, wrenches ect.