Detergents are an integral part of our vehicle care and maintenance. Because during the operation of the engine and many other features will inevitably appear dirt and plaque that affects the overall performance. And these agents can only disappear under the influence of specialized chemicals.
Currently, two types of cleaning solvents are most commonly used to clean cars: carb cleaner vs brake cleaner. So which is the best option for your needs? Please refer to the article below.
What Is Carb Cleaner?
Carb cleaner or Carburetor cleaner is a common name for specialized cleaners used to treat residual stains in carburetors. The main ingredient of a carb cleaner is usually a combination of many powerful cleaning chemicals.
Therefore, this mixture possesses a powerful cleaning ability with many different types of surfaces.
Usually, we will use a carb cleaner to remove varnish deposits, a natural by-product of old gasoline or gasoline that has water in the carburetor. In addition, other accumulated dirt cannot survive contact with the above mixture.
However, you will need to use these solvents carefully and avoid letting them come into contact with car paint, rubber or plastic parts.
Features Of Carb Cleaner
Carb cleaner has some pretty unique properties compared to other popular cleaners. The most typical of which are the following features
High cleaning ability
Often we will quickly see substances such as Acetone, Xylene, Toluene, Methyl Ethyl Ketone, Ethyl Benzene, 2-Butoxyethanol, and propane on the label of this cleaning solvent.
If they exist alone, all of these chemicals are already powerful detergents. But carb cleaner combines all these names to create an impressive cleaning compound.
Handles a wide variety of dirt on many surfaces
The composition of the carb cleaner contains Acetone, which can clean both organic and inorganic substances and grease. In addition, you will see this chemical appear a lot in paint removers.
And that’s also why you need to keep the carb cleaner away from the painted details on the car. Besides Acetone, Xylene, a specialized cleaner for metal parts, also helps to increase the cleaning performance of carb cleaner.
What Is a Brake Cleaner?
Brake cleaner is a cleaning solvent for car brakes and related parts, and This chemical allows us to quickly clean the dirt, dust, or excess oil that has been stuck for a long time on the brake parts and other areas.
A unique feature of brake cleaner is that the components of this product usually dry quickly and do not react with each other to create deposits. This property is essential in a position like a brake.
Because this specialized part to reduce speed needs to ensure the most optimal frictional force, this process can be significantly affected if a few small pieces of residue appear. Another small note for you is that brake cleaner can damage the electrostatic paint layer, so you need to let this solvent avoid painting painted parts.
Features of Brake cleaner
There are two types of brake cleaner on the market today, with one containing chlorine inside and the other utterly devoid of this substance. Basically, both products can remove stains on the brakes, but there are a few differences between chlorinated and non-chlorinated.
Chlorinated brake cleaner
Chlorinated brake cleaners often include a chemical called Trichloroethylene in their ingredients. This type of substance, nicknamed the dry cleaning chemical, can clean grease on metal surfaces even when in a dry state.
Therefore, the cleaning performance of this brake cleaner model is much superior to that of other products.
However, Tetrachlorethylene’s impressive bleaching abilities have incredibly adverse health effects. So if you want to use a chlorinated brake cleaner, safety measures are a must.
Non-chlorinated brake cleaner
Contrary to chlorinated products, a Non-chlorinated brake cleaner does not cause too many harmful effects on your skin and your health. Although the product’s cleaning performance will decrease, in return, you can confidently manipulate it without having to be afraid of it too much.
Can Carb Cleaner And Brake Cleaner Be Used Interchangeably?
In terms of both function and structure, brake cleaner and carb cleaner do not have too many similarities. So the possibility that the two can be interchanged functions is not too high. It has also been proven that you can use some residue-free brake cleaner instead of a carb cleaner.
However, the performance we get is entirely not worth the money spent to buy solvents. In the opposite direction, you should not use carb cleaner to replace brake cleaner as it can cause significant damage to components when they come into contact with unsuitable chemicals.
In short, you shouldn’t replace the places of these two types of detergent with each other.
Difference Between Carb Cleaner Vs Brake Cleaner
The first difference between Carb cleaner and Brake cleaner lies in the structure. If Carb cleaner is derived mainly from pure organic substances, people synthesize Brake cleaner based on organic chlorines to increase performance.
The second difference is the task of both solvents when Carb cleaner is to clean the carburetor, and Brake cleaner is for car brakes. And the last significant difference is that the operation process of Brake cleaner bottles is much more straightforward than Carb cleaner.
How Do These Solvents Affect Health?
After all, carb cleaner and Brake cleaner are solvents made from a mixture of chemicals with good cleaning properties.
So whether the product is labeled as having little or no effect on health, exposure to these substances will undoubtedly put you in a dangerous situation. So be very careful as well as prepare complete protective tools before handling these types of cleaners.
Conclusion
Despite their very different contributions to the maintenance of components, Carb cleaner and Brake cleaner are indispensable chemicals for any driver.
And you should regularly check and clean the brake and carburetor because there will be no alarm clock for these two parts damage, like the way the car temperature gauge goes up and down while driving.
