When I look for instructions for how to do some kind of mechanical task online that involves lubrication, oil, grease, or essentially any kind of liquid, I inevitably find a few posts from what I mentally picture as crusty old guys, to the effect of “just use WD40 on it been using that for years no problems holler if you got questions adios - Joe”. And just as inevitably, the more well-informed (and verbose) people explicitly say “Don’t use WD40, it might sorta work but will do bad thing Y, and product X works a lot better.”
X and Y might vary, but the general scenario is universal across pretty much all fields, industries, and applications. I have never heard anyone say “What you want is WD40, it’s the best product for this purpose.”
Now, I am aware that WD40 was originally developed as some kind of corrosion protectant for aerospace applications. I suppose the idea is that, you have water on something that isn’t supposed to have water on it, you spray WD40 on it and wipe it off, and now the water is gone but the WD40 remains…or something like that.
Is there any other use for which WD40 is the best product available? I don’t mean “best because the Wal-Mart is 40 miles away and all I got is WD-40”, or “best because I’ve always used WD-40 and never bothered to see if there was a better alternative”, I mean “best because there is no product on the market that’s superior.”
Spray it on wet auto-parts and it drives off the water and gives a water proof coating. It can also catch on fire. Makes a pretty good penetrating oil, nothing spectacular. I can’t think of anything where it’s superior to other products.
WD-40 is a lousy lubricant; I much prefer Tri-Flow for that. Tri-Flow gets deep into joints, and then the lighter fractions evaporate and leave behind heavier lubricants and fine PTFE particles.
I still keep WD-40 on hand though because it’s a great solvent that doesn’t attack paint or plastic. Peel a sticker or tape off of something, and leave gooey residue behind? WD-40 is your friend. Got road tar stuck to the side of your car? WD-40. I won’t try to argue that it’s the absolute best solvent, but it’s pretty damn good, and the spray can is an awfully convenient dispenser.
Once a particular mechanism gets frozen (stuck), I can’t think of a better way to free it than WD-40. I’m particularly thinking of windows that I don’t often use. Now an argument can be made that I should have used grease or some other lubricant in order to prevent the mechanism from getting frozen in the first place, but once it’s stuck, WD-40 is the thing to get it unstuck. And until I get it unstuck, I can’t access large parts of the mechanism that would need to be lubricated.
Remember the home handyman’s basic rule:
All you need is WD-40 and duct tape:
If it moves, but it shouldn’t, use duct tape.
If it doesn’t move, but it should, use WD-40.
Back in the days before coil-on-plug ignition systems became ubiquitous, WD40 was great for getting a car with a poorly-insulated ignition system to run on a damp day. Of course, I suppose the “best” product for that was a new distributor cap and spark plug wires.
PB Blaster I’d good, but the best rust penetrant I have ever used is called Maltby Rust Dissolving Penetrant. Hard to find but this stuff makes PB Blaster look like WD-40. :-). (PBB is worth buying just to read the label)
The kind of people who say this usually have very strong opinions about wine, buy their tools from Sharper Image and will throw a hissy fit if their frappuccino isn’t just so.
A mechanic friend gave us a bottle of Aero-Kroil to use on our deli slicer. It smells awful, but seems to work pretty well. I haven’t really tried it in places where I might use WD-40/PB Blaster/Liquid Wrench, but of everything they’ve tried to keep the slicer moving nicely (the part that moves back and forth on the rails), they’ve liked this the best, by far.
As long as I can weasel out of doing the actual slicing, the can use whatever they please.
They just call me over when the thing breaks.
We did have an interesting problem with it though. Apparently it’s a bit drippy. So it drips off the rails, onto the table and the entire slicer slides around on the table like it’s on casters. But now they have some system where they put a piece of paper towel under the rails before they spray it so it drips onto that. Of course, if they didn’t leave the paper towel there all day, it might not stink for the next two hours.
Like I said, as long as I don’t have to do all the slicing all day, they can spray whatever they want on it and they really like the Aero-Kroil and from what I’ve seen it really does work well in this application. We use that machine a lot and your arm gets tired in a hurry if it’s not working smoothly.