Testing Super Clean® Around the Garage
The folks at Super Clean® offered a few of their popular products for testing. This blog tests them in common DIY garage applications.
-Sean J. Miller 4/7/2024
It was perfect timing for Super Clean® to send me their trial products. I was rebuilding my '99 Jeep Grand Cherokee front end and replacing its transmission pan gasket. Rebuilding that front end meant a lot of grease and grime to contend with.
The transmission pan undoubtably would get transmission fluid all over the garage floor since there was no drain plug. Also, the leak blew fluid all over my front wheels as I drove.
The front end rebuild went well. There are plenty of videos out there already on driving out ball joints. My only additional tip is that you should go ahead and replace the steering alignment sleeves (the big bars between the tie-rods). I once did not and it was murder threading the new tie-rods on the old sleeves. They were just too corroded. New ones, with a little anti-seize added to the threads, the toe-in adjusts like butter. With a tape measure and your bare hands, one could easily adjust it themselves without even needing to jack up the vehicle! Here's a look at all the newly replaced parts:
For the pan gasket replacement, I had to clean up my the pan to ensure the gasket surface was properly prepped. I used the Super Clean® General Degreaser for this:
So, after the rebuild and replacing the transmission pan gasket, the floor was pretty well saturated with grease and grime. So, I tried out their Heavy Duty Degreaser.
This would be a product you could spray onto your engine to hose it back clean. It fizzes up. To apply it, you first rinse the area or component with cold water. You then fog the Heavy Duty Degreaser. After letting it work on its own for a few minutes, you then rinse with cold water. For the garage floor, I did that last part with a mop and a bucket of cold, clean water.
It is not uncommon for my family to tip toe through the garage to get something out of a vehicle or grab a screwdriver. The Super Clean® degreaser did a great job getting the floor back to sock ready. This is saying a lot considering I dumped pretty much a full gallon of transmission fluid when I missed my catch pan.
The next mission was to get the wheels back to normal. Being this vehicle is 25 years old, I rarely think about washing it. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I washed its wheels. But, since I had transmission fluid on them, this was a good opportunity to try out the Super Clean® wheel cleaner.
Very much like the Heavy Duty Degreaser, you use cold water to first rinse the wheel. You then spray the product on and give it a few minutes to work. I did find that the thick, multi season grime in the corners did need hand cleaned. That was caked on brake dust. But, it did come off quickly. I then rinsed again with cold water. It definitely made short work of it.
Another application around the garage I didn't think to snap a shot of was tool cleaning. Putting away tools greasy will just set yourself up for more work on your next job. So, after the tools are used and I'm straightening up, I simply plasted the table and tools with a fog of the Heavy Duty Degreaser. Then, as my last part of the job, I wiped down every tool and put them away clean and dry.
For the record, this review was done just for fun without any payment other than having the three bottles shipped to me to try. In all, having these three products on the shelf in the garage is very much a plus. A big part of being a Do-it-Yourselfer is the pride in the work. Having a sock ready garage, clean tools, and a professionally clean look on your finished job is a very big part of that. I'd definitely recommend these products on the shelf.
-Sean
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