GUN CLEANING SOLVENTS FROM THE AUTO PARTS STORE

This is the spray type Top Engine Cleaner avalible at GM parts departments.  Not to be confused with the liquid that comes in a plastic bottle.  Good old Sea foam has been around for decades.  It's around $7 at any retailer.

            

The stores are full of solvents and cleaners that will clean the bore of your guns.  You pick one, try it, and it hopefully gets the gunk out.  I've found that most anything will clean the barrel of a well maintained gun that just had 50 rounds of decent ammo put through it.  Being a cheapskate, I've been mixing up "Ed's red" for years.  Basically a mixture of 1 part each ATF, kerosene, brake cleaner or acetone, and WD-40.  It's worked well for me.  But recently I acquired and old Chinese type 53, Mosin Nagant carbine and let's just say it was not well maintained.  The bore had a light frosting of rust and I could not see the rifling.  It literally looked like the rifling had been shot out of it.  I suspect that it had been given a quick cleaning and shot with a cosmoline coating in the bore.  That resulted in a hard black mess in the bore.  I tried Ed's red and a bore brush.  The patches came out black every time.  Still no rifling.  I hosed it with brake clean and scrubbed with a brush.  It got better, but still patches were black.  I soaked it in GM rust penetrant overnight.

This is probably the best rust penetrant made.  It stinks terrible, but it loosens rusted bolts very well.  Dissolves lead oxide according to the label.  Available at any GM parts counter.

It says it dissolves lead oxide.  It helped a lot, but still the black patches.  By this time I saw shallow rifling, but the bore still looked worn out.  So, I went out and shot the thing for the first time.  That helped quite a bit.  I could actually see all the rifling for the first time.  Still it was quite dirty.  So I went online and found some bench rest shooters raving about GM top engine cleaner and Sea Foam.  Since I work in a GM parts department, I have easy access to those products.  I mixed the 2 products equally and shook them up.  They didn't blow up, but they never combined either.  The 2 products separate in the bottle, but remain in suspension for quite a while if shaken.  I ran 3 patches of this mixture through the barrel and voila, the 3rd came out clean.  Now, I'm not sure how much of this miracle can be attributed to the 2 products and how much of my success is due to the hot fireballs that came out of the muzzle when I pulled the trigger 15 times.  Surely all that fire helped it.  But I was still impressed with the cleaners.  I never get a bore that clean in that few patches with Ed's red.  Even in well maintained guns.  I need more experience to declare one or both of these products the be-all, end-all of gun solvents.  But, I am hopeful that one or both of these items will become my go to solution for everyday cleaning as well as those hard to clean acquisitions. 

When you stop and think about what these products are designed to do, it makes some sense.  They clean carbon deposits from the valves of an engine.  And, whatcha know?  Carbon is a major byproduct of burning gun powder.  Seems logical to me that if it cleans carbon from inside an engine, it will clean carbon from the bolt of an AR 15.  As I say, I'm no scientist.  I didn't do a real experiment.  I just thought I should get this out there for all to see.  Please be aware that these chemicals will eat varnish off of your stocks.  Some will soften plastics and peel paint.  So use with reason.