Safe to soak parts in degreaser?
 

The distributor is caked in oil both inside and out. Since I'm taking it apart to clean the seals I was wondering if car parts in general can be soaked in degreaser without weakening the metals or causing stress on them.

For the distributor specifically I gutted the internals on a spare 95 distributor and took just the single piece of metal housing and dunked it in a bucket of roughly 1:1 purple power and left it like that for roughly two days. The result was it became shiny and clean and most of the oil dissolved off and is now floating on the purple power.

The metal doesn't appear to have changed and doesn't appear to have tarnished or rusted either. But that probably depends on what type of metal it is. Am I the only one considering soaking car parts in degreasers or has it been done before? I'm also considering doing this to the valve cover because the underside has baked on oil. But the valve cover may be made of a different metal such as aluminum and I think purple power has a problem with it.

I wouldn't soak electrical parts like sensors, wires, etc in the cleaner.

I think the distributor housing is aluminum. You might want to try something milder like soaking in Palmolive or Dawn dish soap and water to see if it will remove the grease. I'm not sure what the purple power would do to the paint on the valve cover.

Thanks. yeah you're right. I tried rubbing some purple power on a paper towel on the valve cover and a little black came off on to the towel so I think it would destroy the paint on the outside.

I guess I'll just leave it alone.

By the way I don't know why I said I wanted to "clean the seals" in the distributor, makes absolutely no sense. I meant I'm going to replace that internal seal behind the coupling. I already ordered the same exact NOK seal but it hasn't arrived yet.