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I was trying to find someone to clean the crankcase of a Packard engine I am rebuilding near Reading Pa . The Car machine shops cannot fit the crankcase in there cleaning machine. Called several truck shops the only way they have is steam clean. The block has been sitting for 60 plus years and the grease is rock hard and I want it to look like a new piece of aluminum. I want all The oil holes cleaned. I tried the internet for ultrasonic cleaning and having no luck there. Its way to big for my solvent tank. Any Ideas? thanks for any help

Done it once, don't want to do it again, kind of a dirty & challenging job but if you want to do it yourself, I'd start with the steam cleaning you've already looked into, and then follow up with hand-cleaning with solvent and soft brushes. For the oil passages you can use solvent plus bore brushes aided with some compressed air. Lots of different solvents you could use, brake cleaner is effective and not too obnoxious.

If you're looking for a hands-off approach, take it to one of the shops that specializes in rebuilding these Packard engines like Automotive Restorations - perhaps 40 miles from Reading in Lebanon, NJ. They also have the equipment to line-bore your main bearings, or anything else all the way to a complete rebuild.

For any wire brushing usr BRASS bristle brushs , not steel.
The bras bristle will make the AL. look like brand new and rather fast.

I've never tried any of the acids, (Muratic is commonly used???) to clean Al. But i have used it to remove Al. deposits from cast iron and steel.

I am not sure what proportions of water to muratic to mix. There might be some other kind of acid or solvent that is better.

Cast Al of the prewar era was extremely porous casting. Therefore difficult to clean to any kind of a "like new" appearence. So it might wise to determine what kind of solvent or acid that mite be best to use.

Talk with an HVAC experts. Some of them use an acid or somekind of solvent to clean AC evaporator and condensors.

I degreased my entire front end and engine with it still in the car. The steering knuckles had so much accumulation that they looked like an elephant's leg. I used a putty knife and a large screwdriver to break up and remove the thicker accumulations, before I started with the solvents. Otherwise, you are going to waste a lot of solvent to break up those thicker areas. You could use a plastic scraper as well to avoid gouging the AL.

Once I got down pretty close to the metal and got to the "burned" on stuff. I used oven cleaner. Not sure if that stuff is safe for AL. And finally, a wire cup and wheel mounted on a die grinder to take the area down to bare metal. I used a steel wire cup and wheel, but I am sure you could use a stiff brass one as get similar results.

As Dave said, brake cleaner is awesome stuff for degreasing.

You can see a lot of this in my project blog.

Aluminum is a fairly reactive metal, the only common acid I know of that is compatible is nitric acid in concentrations of 20% v/v or less and it certainly wouldn't be of any value in removing accumulated grease and oil. DO NOT use hydrochloric (a/k/a muriatic), and DO NOT use oven cleaner, it's alkaline which is a classic etchant for dissolving aluminum!

Stick to solvents.

I would stay away from strong acids like muratic or the strong bases like those found in oven cleaners when trying to clean up aluminum. For a do it yourself approach I would go with process mentioned above by by Dave (O-D).

I have also found that paint remover works wells on thinner grease deposits. Nasty stuff, but with any of the solvents wear glasses (or better yet splash googles), solvent resistant gloves and work outside (or better yet a respirator with organic vapor cartridges).

You might even want to have a go at it with a high pressure power washer as long as you have a good place to do it. Stay away from the machined surfaces.

Good Luck & I don't envy you in any way shape or form if you do it yourself.

Aircraft piston engines have aluminum cases, you might check with dedicated engine overhaul facilities that do their own case work as they may well have a cleaning cabinet or similar that would work for you. Or at least they can offer tips on safe materials to use for cleaning your block.

Other than mineral spirits (normal parts cleaner solvent) our shop doesn't use anything else to clean the engine cases, and if we're doing an overhaul we send the cases out to a specialized facility for cleaning/welding/machining.

A major facility in Pennsylvania is Penn Yan Aero, www.pennyanaero.com. Start there and see what they say.

Back in the '60s I did consulting work for United Engine Rebuilders in New Brunswick, NJ trying to find and optimize a single hot-soak cleaner for aluminum engine blocks, among them Corvair, VW and AMC. The alloys they used were so different that there was no single "magic" juice for the job, what worked OK on one alloy attacked and etched the others; in the end they stuck with solvent cleaning.

A superb solvent method was to use a vapor degreaser with trichloroethylene, something that thankfully for our health the EPA has long since put to rest. But it was just an absolutely marvelous method.

New Jersey isn't all that far from Reading, sounds like a fellow that has experience..... LOL
John

New Jersey isn't all that far from Reading, sounds like a fellow that has experience

Probably the premier shop for prewar classic car work and especially Packards on the East Coast and amongst the top 3 or 4 nationally. I know Steve (owner) well and visit the shop often. If you want to chat about it, we can PM or phone. You can follow some of his projects here:

packardclub.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=504