With lawn and garden season fast approaching, it’s time to fire up the garden polluters, and by that I mean the tools powered by two-stroke engines. Luckily, Green Earth Technology has developed its new line of Green Oil, a “Green alternative” to your regular motor oil. Green Earth Technology makes their G-Oils from American-grown base oil that’s “enhanced with the power of nanotechnology and dehydrogenation”.

G-Oil contains bio-additives such as amino acids, plant and vegetable extracts, non-ionic surfactants, and plant-based fatty acids in a base of colloidal micelles. It all adds up to produce a range of oils that’ll work in anything from your lawn mower to your heavy-duty turbocharged and super-charged diesel.

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Raise your hand if you actually re-pack your trailer’s wheel bearings once a year as recommended. Yeah, repacking bearings by hand can be a greasy mess — who really wants to put globs of grease in their hands, except my three-year-old?  Do yourself a favor and pick up a bearing packer like this one from Lisle for $8. A bearing packer evenly injects new grease into the bearing, which forces out the old grease and flushes out any other contaminants.

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Ridout Plastics makes their Slick Strips out of an ultra-high molecular weight plastic film, with a low coefficient of friction. In English, that means it makes surfaces slide past each other easier. It’s also tough — its abrasion resistance surpasses Teflon, but you can cut it to length easily.  Even with an adhesive backing, the strips measure only 1/32″ thick.

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You want to protect the things you love — your family, your pets, your tools – but with all the folk remedies swirling around the mythosphere, who’s to know what works best? For cleaning and lubricating metal tools like saw blades and router bits, folks over at the Ridgid forum have discussed using Simple Green All-Purpose cleaner (an alkaline water-based cleaner with a 9.4 pH), carnauba wax (mainly acidic, found in cosmetics and Altoids), oven cleaner (a soap-forming caustic base), apple cider vinegar (which, according to enthusiasts, helps remove “body sludge toxins”), washing soda (a potent base with a pH of 11), and even coffee (acidic with a pH around 5, unless you’re French).

Then there’s Empire’s Complete Tool Saver System. It includes a surface cleaner/degreaser, a water-based pitch resin remover, and three types of lubricants: one for router bits that reduces heat and friction, one for moving parts, and one for saw blades. This collection is supposed to replace and best all the folk remedies, for about twenty bucks.

So what do you prefer: a pre-packed kit like the one pictured above, or home chemistry experiments? Let us know in comments.

Manufacturer’s Website
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Fan in your computer whining because the tiny bearing needs oil? Nothing does the job as well as a micro oiler. Owned one of those cheap leaky plastic pen oilers — the one where you squeeze and too much oil squirts out? Empire’s precision oiler allows precise oil delivery, one drop at a time.

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It seems somewhat ironic that with oil prices now over $90 a barrel we’d find on a deal for a free quart of oil, but thats exactly what the folks over at O’Reilly Auto Parts are offering. To get your free quart of either Pennzoil Platinum 5W-30 or 10W-30 simply purchase a quart from your local O’Reilly and mail in the rebate.

Yep, we know: mail in rebates suck, and you’ll still have to pay for the stamp and local sales tax. But hey, Sean’s cheap-ass enough to do this, so we figured maybe you are, too. The deal expires Nov. 20, 2007.

Pennzoil Platinum [Pennzoil]
Pennzoil Platinum Rebate [O’Reilly]
Store Locations [O’Reilly]

I spotted this in a tatty copy of SkyMall on my last fight, and I’m thinking about purchasing one, if for no other reason than to cut down on the oil stains on my driveway.  Products like the $500 transfer tanker interested me, but $500 buys a lot of oil changes.  This one sells for just $65.

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If you believe the hype, WD-40’s good for everything except curing cancer.  And regardless of what unkind words you might have about it, we’d be willing to bet you’ve got a can in the garage somewhere.

But with that in mind — is it still worth keeping in the shop?  We’ve found far better penetrants, and there are better lubricants available for almost any special purpose.  On the other hand, isn’t it handy to have a general-purpose lubricant around?

What say you?  Let us know in comments.

Kythri writes: “This isn’t so much a tool as an alternative — and an often superior one at that — to WD-40.  It’s saved my bacon a number of times.”

From the Break-Free website:

When the United States Military issued PD-48, a purchase description of properties for a single, multi-purpose product to maintain their weaponry, it became known as the “impossible specification” because of its severe requirements. The first product to meet the challenge - Break-Free CLP.

Break-Free’s flagship product, CLP is a unique formulation of synthetic oils and individual proprietary ingredients which synergize in combination to do three important tasks simultaneously: Effectively Clean, Lubricate and Protect metal. After years of rigorous testing, CLP actually exceeded the Military’s requirements and was approved as a product to meet MIL-L-63460, a new specification. Break-Free CLP is now recognized around the world as the standard by which maximum metal performance and protection is ensured.

That’s a lot of hype, but it seems to me that it’d be with trying out — especially when you consider that street pricing starts around $8 for the 12-ounce aerosol version.

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I’m sure everyone reading knows how useful WD-40 can be.  (Just don’t spray it in locks.  Your locksmith will hate you forever.)  Now WD-40’s available in a “no-mess” pen as well, giving you a) an easier way to carry it around, b) a method to dispense smaller amounts cleanly, and c) a seriously cool addition to your lubricant collection.

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In 1894 George Cole named this product because of its triple ability to “clean, lubricate and protect.”  Over a hundred years later, 3-in-1 oil is to the shop what ketchup is to the refrigerator – it’s not complete until you have some. 

The formula consists of pale spindle oil with a small amount of corrosion inhibitor and citronella oil which gives the product its familiar smel; my father’s workshop always smells of it.  We use it around our shop to oil knife hinges, bicycle chains, and countless other metal moving parts.

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Gene D. writes: “A couple of years ago, I had to replace the exhaust pipe on my car.  When I was removing the old pipe, I discovered that the bolts holding the pipe to the catalytic converter were completely rusted, so I soaked them down in WD-40 and waited half an hour.  When I tried to remove them, all I succeeded in doing was stripping the nuts almost completely round.  I went to the auto parts store to see if they had replacement bolts and nuts in stainless steel.  I explained my situation to the salesman there and asked him for advice on the best way to remove the existing bolts.  He pointed me to a can of PB Penetrating Catalyst and guaranteed me that it would do the trick.  I was a bit skeptical, but it sounded better than cutting the bolts off, so I went home and sprayed down the nuts and bolts and waited about 5 minutes.  I was able to easily remove the nuts using a pair of vice grip pliers.”

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