civicenthusiast

I couldn't find any direct answers online so I thought I would ask here.

I would assume mixing fluids would be a huge no-no. To avoid this, would it be best to use different funnels for different fluids, or could you use one funnel and clean it in between using different fluids? If so, how would you go about properly cleaning your funnel, since most fluids are basically toxic and probably illegal to just wash off with a hose or something? Do you just wipe them with a rag or paper towel and if you wipe it with a paper towel is it safe/legal to throw that away?

Same thing for the oil drain pan, or any drip pan or similar. How would you go about cleaning it? Should you even bother cleaning it?

Should rags be immediately thrown away or can they be reused? Can they be cleaned? How should you store them?

As for tubes, such as for DIY brake bleeding, should you try and clean the inside or is it not worth it? If so how would you clean something like that?

xRiCeBoYx

iTrader: (22)

I have one funnel specifically for coolant, one for oil use, and one with a long tube for MT fluid. When I'm done with them, I give them a good wipe down with a disposable towel and call it a day. Same deal for the oil pan. Not gonna lie, anything I use a disposable towel to wipe down oil, I put in a plastic bag along with other oil-stained/soaked trash and throw it in the trash can. Am I supposed to? Dunno. Probably not.

If you really wanted to properly clean funnels and stuff, soap (as aforementioned, I use dish soap) and water, and allow to thoroughly air dry prior to its next use. The coolant/water funnel, you can probably get away with just rinsing it out.

Shop rags, if I use them, I half-assed hand wash them in a sink with some dish detergent (since most of those are meant to wash away oils quite well), then toss them in their own wash cycle, along with whatever clothes I dirtied up in the process of working on my car. Storage for those rags is a random cabinet in the garage, sometimes haphazardly tossed into a bucket of sorts.

Tubes I've used for brake bleeding get coiled back up and tossed in my tool box. I usually don't have much residual brake fluid in those lines anyways.

ezone

Homeowner garage occasional weekend DIYer is gonna have different needs from someone like me who does it for a living. I type this thinking of my bay at work vs. my dads stuff in his garage.

I probably have over a dozen different funnels on one work bench. Some are stock, some modified, a couple are completely hand built. LOL
I use....maybe 4 of them on the daily for frequent common jobs.

Funnel storage on that bench is....a couple big kitty litter jugs with 3/4 of the tops cut off, flipped, and slid to the bottom of the jug. This provides an inch or two of space in the bottom for dribbles to accumulate before I need to dump it out.

Funnels are stuck in the jugs with the wide ends down, this cuts down on getting contaminated with airborne grime, dandelion floaters, cottonwood floaters, and bugs.

Brake cleaner is my best friend. When I need to clean any of them for any reason, including using one for a different fluid, a good dose of brake cleaner cleans it and it will dry pretty quickly leaving no residue in the funnel.

Tubing...I usually rinse out with brake cleaner and store in a drawer in my toolbox with a crapload of other similar specially made items of similar material. I really need to make a lid for this drawer, it's like a bunch of worms are trying to escape whenever I try to close it.


Cloth shop towels in the shop, they are cleaned weekly by the uniform company.

DIYer, if you are married and want to stay that way you need to get a pocketfull of quarters and take extremely oily greasy nasty rags and clothes to a laundromat.
Trust me on this, do not question it.


Paper towels a DIYer might use....probably need to check with your local trash collection service as to what they will or won't allow. Many won't allow oil filters in the trash, some may allow as long as they are thoroughly drained (couple days). Plastic bottles go to recycling here.
Paper towels with oil nobody here seems to care about.... (and they make good kindling for a recreational fire as long as you aren't going to cook your wieners and marshmallows over the oil fire).

Drain pans and buckets in the shop just get dumped into the waste oil tank and set to the side, nobody bothers to do much more than that unless they get loaded with mud/grease/nasty whatever. We aren't going to reuse any used fluid that goes into a drain pan.

A DIYer will probably want to at the very least wipe out all the liquid residue from his drain pan so it can't make a mess in the closet if it gets knocked off the shelf. You may want to store all of your funnels, filter wrench, tubing, slightly used towels, grease gun, and other stuff in your stored drain pan just to keep it all together.

FYI I personally have never seen nor heard of oily rags starting or causing a fire (petroleum oils) just keep in mind they are flammable and you should store carefully, but rags soaked with animal and vegetable oils in a closed space can start a fire because decomposition can generate heat.

DIYer, save plastic (milk?) jugs to put the used oil and other fluids in, take them to the Zone or wherever you purchased your fluids for disposal.
Around here those places must accept your used fluids for disposal.

xRiCeBoYx

iTrader: (22)

yeah, i guess i forgot to mention I store my funnels wide side down, as well. 1) they stand on their own and 2) the reasons ezone mentioned. And yeah, I forgot to mention brake cleaner. Stuff is magic. I do probably use them in practice, but trying to think of these things that, admittedly, have not done in quite a while, is a bit different.

oil and grease is the reason i pre-wash things before i toss them in the wash. if they're especially bad, to the point that dish soap wont suffice, I'll fill a 5 gallon bucket with hot water and a ****-ton of laundry detergent and let it soak

Fluids I replace (i.e. coolant, tranny fluid, oil) get collected by the drain pan, and once I've used the new stuff, I re-use the old bottles for waste fluids. I know VatoZone accepts used oil, and I've been told to go to Las Vegas' waste management for proper disposal of coolant, as they didn't accept it. You may have different local laws regarding it. I guess you can **** off hippies by dumping coolant in other manners, but I can't say I condone that.

ezone

I'm really old school. I beat the laundry on rocks down at the creek.
My dad always saved the gallon milk jugs for used oil.... and we have several customers who bring in used oil in the same jugs. We take it, no problem.

I was thinking....if one buys the 5 quart jug of oil from WallyWorld, there's gonna be a bit of leftover new oil one will want to save. That goes in the trunk..

One Quart oil bottles....one might spill more used oil trying to refill 4 of those than you did changing oil in the first place.

You KNOW someone is gonna have a 18" tall funnel sticking out of a one quart bottle trying to dump a 5 gallon drain pan into it...and it tips over, spilling its contents...... in the drainage ditch leading to the fishing pond/swimming hole.

Our oil disposal company takes used coolant in the same truck, they don't care if it is mixed with the oil. (oil floats on top of water and coolant anyway, it's not tough for them to separate the liquids later)
Other companies may have different rules.

civicenthusiast

Bit of a late reply, but I'm wondering when you say "disposable towel" do you mean like a shop paper towel or an actual thick towel?

Also, what style of funnels are ideal for the different types of fluids? You mention one with a long tube for transmission fluid, is there a practical reason for this?

ezone

Disposable, diy throw away when you are done...., as opposed to the washable red or white cloth kind used in regular shops and serviced by the uniform company.


Funnels, I don't sort or purchase by fluid type at all. If I need a long skinny one for a particular job at the moment, I need it. If I need something else different, I need it. If it has to be cleaned because it had another fluid in it, it gets cleaned.


Have you seen where the dipstick located on a 7th gen automatic transmission?

Colin42

or if you want to fill a manual trans with the car sitting level on the ground

ezone

Some funnel that I can attach a rubber hose to + long rubber hose + short metal tube with a bend in it, or something similar that will reach the fill hole.

Try dumping some heavy gear lube into the side of a rear wheel drive transmission....from way up high the engine compartment that way LOL


A kerosene type pump or a rubber squeeze bulb pump can also work wonders.

xRiCeBoYx

iTrader: (22)

These bad boys is what I use.


Not my photo, but I have this same one. Like mentioned above, used when filling MT fluid with the car sitting level


I use one of these for coolant. The wide bore of the narrow end fits pretty much perfectly in the radiator.


Also had one of these for oil. 1qt oil bottles fit well in the top. Have no idea where it went though, so I've defaulted to a regular funnel