Had some mixed results with the Wintergreen brew tonight. Reading through this thread again, I think I just was unlucky. Here's what happened:
I had 12 old hard carb insulators from my CBX project, plus the insulators off my 400F, plus two sets of airbox>carb boots and 2 plenum>airbox boots to do. So I got 4 ounces of the Wintergreen oil off Amazon, mixed it with a gallon of water, heated it to 175 or so on a hotplate in my shop in a non-stick pan, tossed the whole lot in. Saw the temp climb near 200, tapered off the heat for a bit, covered it and set a timer. 20 min later I went to stir the brew and have a look and here's the odd part: One entire set from the 400, of carb>airbox boots plus the larger plenum>airbox boot were beginning to fall apart, and so there was sticky goo floating around the pot getting all over the other parts. I halted right there, fished it all out, rinsed everything off and scrubbed off as much of the goo as I could.
Photos:
Look closely at the large ring under the bottle of Wintergreen - see how it looks a little frayed, like it's starting to break down? That's my culprit I'm certain, along with it's mates:
Heat it all up:
In the brew:
Turned to goo:
Lesson learned? If the rubber is looking punky, cracked, frayed, proceed with caution, and treat these solo. The other stuff came out well, although I cut the treatment short to avert disaster. I am going to filter my brew through a coffee filter and try again without heat. But not tonight.