Hope this is the correct forum for this, it was either here or "General" or "Workshop", but I feel penetrating oil is essentially a tool for getting troublesome bolts out so...here I am...
Years ago I came across a website (which I can no longer find) where a fella did some unbiased experiments to see which penetrating oil performed the best. He tested several of the top selling brands along with a home brew and a control group. What he did was soak 20 nut/bolt combos in salt water for each of the products he was testing, and left them in said solution until they were rusted to the point of expansion, which is common to see on a rusty suspension bolt here in the rust belt. He then dumped out the salt water, allowed the combos to dry, and then let them soak in their respective penetrating oils for a set amount of time. He then placed the bolts in a vice and proceeded to completely unscrew each combo with a torque wrench that recorded the maximum torque required during disassembly, and then averaged the results for the 20 combos. The result was that Liquid Wrench outperformed everything else by a large margin. I had been a fan of PB Blaster up until this point, but it came in near the bottom of the pack. Incidentally, so did WD40 which is NOT a penetrating oil at all, so no surprise there. In my efforts to find said review (literally from years and years back, so no surprise the website is gone) I found the following YouTube video where someone did a similar, albeit much smaller, experiment but with essentially the same results. I am a powder coater and motorcycle builder/flipper by trade so, no, I don't work for Liquid Wrench nor am I being paid by them in any way. Just posting this so you can make an informed decision the next time you purchase a penetrating oil in hopes of unsticking some stubborn, nasty bolt or nut. I see folks on this forum all the time saying "soak it with some WD40 or PB Blaster" and cringe knowing there is a much better alternative out there that might make the difference between getting it off with a wrench or a cut-off wheel...
Which Penetrating Oil is Best? Let's find out!
Years ago I came across a website (which I can no longer find) where a fella did some unbiased experiments to see which penetrating oil performed the best. He tested several of the top selling brands along with a home brew and a control group. What he did was soak 20 nut/bolt combos in salt water for each of the products he was testing, and left them in said solution until they were rusted to the point of expansion, which is common to see on a rusty suspension bolt here in the rust belt. He then dumped out the salt water, allowed the combos to dry, and then let them soak in their respective penetrating oils for a set amount of time. He then placed the bolts in a vice and proceeded to completely unscrew each combo with a torque wrench that recorded the maximum torque required during disassembly, and then averaged the results for the 20 combos. The result was that Liquid Wrench outperformed everything else by a large margin. I had been a fan of PB Blaster up until this point, but it came in near the bottom of the pack. Incidentally, so did WD40 which is NOT a penetrating oil at all, so no surprise there. In my efforts to find said review (literally from years and years back, so no surprise the website is gone) I found the following YouTube video where someone did a similar, albeit much smaller, experiment but with essentially the same results. I am a powder coater and motorcycle builder/flipper by trade so, no, I don't work for Liquid Wrench nor am I being paid by them in any way. Just posting this so you can make an informed decision the next time you purchase a penetrating oil in hopes of unsticking some stubborn, nasty bolt or nut. I see folks on this forum all the time saying "soak it with some WD40 or PB Blaster" and cringe knowing there is a much better alternative out there that might make the difference between getting it off with a wrench or a cut-off wheel...
Which Penetrating Oil is Best? Let's find out!