WD-40 + Hand Sanitizer

I know this may sound weird of just plain dumb, but I was wondering if your could put WD-40 on a bearing and then clean it in hand sanitizer. Since the WD-40 displaces water, it would displace the water from the hand sanitizer, correct? And the hand sanitizer would kind of clean the bearing and WD-40 off, leaving it ready to be lubed. What are your opinions on this?

No.

Use the proper products.

The hand sanitizer will also contain moisturizers(maybe) and alcohol and other stuff you don’t want in your bearing.

Sounds like a recipe for heartbreak. :wink:

Hand sanitizer (the kind I’m thinking of anyhow) is primarily alcohol-based, often comes in gel format, and contains ingredients for aroma and skin conditioning.

WD-40 is a cocktail of solvents that displace water and also have the effect of causing temporary lubrication and cleaning of moving parts so that they can become mobile again, without leaving any useful lubrication as a byproduct.

So, no matter which order you’re doing it in, you’re putting a bunch of stuff on a bearing that you probably don’t need. WD-40 could be used on a bearing I suppose… but yoyo bearings are small and sensitive to residue; even after lubricating the bearing, I’m not sure you’d get improved performance.

I would avoid the hand sanitizer, full-stop. It doesn’t have anything in it that would be a benefit to cleaning a bearing. The alcohol could actually accelerate corrosion.


If you’re looking for something readily available for cleaning a bearing, you could use some distilled water (found at most grocery and drug stores in huge bottles intended for drinking). I know what some of you are thinking: “Water makes metal RUST, Greg!” but rust doesn’t happen instantly. Clean the bearing and dry it with a hair dryer while spinning it on a chopstick or pen or whatever fits. Then lube it.

There are better solvents, some of which are not hard to find (acetone and mineral spirits are found at most hardware stores; lighter fluid can be found wherever Zippos are sold). Some of these should be used with supervision if you are young (especially acetone).


But, I’m over-answering the question. I wouldn’t use the WD-40 and Hand Sanitizer combo, or either of those items individually, either. If I had absolutely no other options, I would default to water.

I think something that needs to be specified in general when people are ‘cleaning’ a bearing is what they are trying to achieve. Are you a) Trying to rid yourself of any lube, either an excess or just old/gunky, or b) trying to rid your bearing of dust. If the first is true, then mineral spirits or acetone (preferably the latter as far as I’m concerned) is the way to go. If you’re trying to rid yourself of dust, acetone or mineral spirits will do approximately nothing. It’s actually just the rinsing process that works. So in actual fact you could just rinse in lube, or use compressed air, or the solvents mentioned above. I’ve actually used lube as the removal solution a couple of times in the recent past and it works just as well. I’ve then used a liberal amount of baking parchment to remove the excess. This is pretty tedious though!

Okay thanks for help. I’ll ask my dad if he has one of the mentioned cleaning solvents. If not I guess I have to go shopping soon… ;D

Water and a good dish soap, such as Dawn. Dawn I’ve found does a very good job removing greases, dirt crud, solvents and more. It also rinses away clean(as to all other dish soaps. I just find Dawn superior for removing the stuff I don’t want in there).

Again, ignore the “water will rust your bearing”. While true, this takes a lot of neglect and intent to not dry things out.

I’ve used lube to act as an agent to help capture and lift dirt and stuff in order for the solvent to more easily take away stuff. It can work. It doesn’t always work, but that depends on what’s going on with the bearing. When it doesn’t work, it also doesn’t hurt either.

Keep in mind, the solvent mostly removes the oil. Blowing out the bearing removes other contaminants.

WD40 and hand sanitizer is not cost effective. A small bottle 5oz of hand sanitizer can cost as much as a liter of mineral spirits.

Plus the WD40…

You can get a lot more!! Maybe 2 liters :p.

Hand sanitizer is good at killing germs, you wouldnt clean a car with hand sanitizer. Unless the car had a cold then maybe…

There is nothing wrong with WD40…

lolll