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What to Use to Clean up Oil Spills and Leaks
“It’s just marking its territory” or “It’s sweating horsepower” are cute ways to acknowledge a fact of life many vintage car enthusiasts live with every day: Old cars leak. Over time, the seals and gaskets of cars often lose effectiveness. Before long, the small seepage from a nicked valve cover gasket can go from a drop to a puddle large enough that you could almost sell the spot next to your toolbox as lake frontage. Even if all you want to do is roll under and find out where the leak is, you’ve got to deal with the oil on the floor. There are many options, but some type of absorbent is the choice of professionals. Here’s how a handful compared when tested against each other by the YouTube channel Project Farm.
Comparing how well an absorbent can make oil dry can be annoying for a regular person since most absorbents come packaged in large amounts that even the leakiest car would take a good while to go through. It would take quite some time to use multiple styles for a real-world test. Instead, Project Farm takes 16 common absorbents and subjects them to a cadre of tests designed to give some real-world perspective that might cut through marketing claims.
The test was simple: Weigh out an amount of absorbent, then saturate it with oil or coolant and weigh again to see how much oil was absorbed. This was also compared to each absorbent’s price to get a ballpark of both effectiveness and value. In the end, there were clear front runners for both absorbent mats and granulated. For a put-down-and-sweep-up option, these tests favored Coco Cleaner Pro, which is made from coconut fibers. Meanwhile, Pig brand mats fared the best out of the mat tests.
These can be handy ways to clean up spills and though the products themselves are not hazardous, once they soak up common automotive fluids, they do need to be disposed of properly. Check your local guidelines for getting rid of oil-soaked absorbents, just as a person should for all oil-soaked rags or materials. Oil leaks might be inevitable for most cars, but oil stains and puddles on our floors and driveways do not have to be.
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I have found the sanding residue from sanding down Bondo to be a fairly effective oil absorbent. I also save the shavings from the circular saw
I, too, save and use the sawdust and shavings from my woodshop, wood construction projects and even the chain sawing of firewood. That then gets burned, which may not be the most environmental way of disposal, but the amount of oil as a ratio to the amount of sawdust is quite small.
When I was in the printing business, we used Pig Blankets under presses and other equipment that sometimes leaked oils – great products!
Has anyone tried wood ash? I ran out of oil dry and kitty litter, so I’ve been saving the ashes from my wood burning insert. Thankfully, I haven’t had any spills to try it out.
Wish I’d read this a few days ago. I emptied out my woodshop dust collector bin last week. It seems that I should have saved that bag.
I usually have a bit of leftover cement that I use to soak up oil an oil spill and then be swept up. Sawdust as mentioned works. Also if wet down (damp) and spread will collect and hold a lot of the nasty fine dust on shop floors that just brooming misses. Relatively quick and easy. In situations where I know I’m more than likely to accidentally spill a bit I throw down a piece of scrap ply. Soaks up the remaining oil after a swipe and can be used again for the same purpose. I did an art project and was asked if I found the distressed wood or created it. _ “Sort of both in a way. That’s old oil and transmission fluid .”