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Contact cleaner - Good, cheap & readily available...

Posted by Joe S on May 14, 1999 at 08:34:45:
I've been on the search for a good contact cleaner since using up the last of my bottle of Super Contact a few months back. Unfortunately trips to rat shack and my local electronis supply only yielded contact cleaners that included contact enhancers (read - gunk) that they would leave behind on the contacts. I dont know about you but I believe in squeaky clean rather than leaving anything behind since it invariably gunks up and collects dust after years of use. Thats why I liked Super Contact. It rapidly evaporated, left no residue and generally dissolved anything it touched that you didnt want on you contacts. But then I ran out & couldn't find a source (besides it was expensive - $12 or $15 for a small bottle)
But that changed last week when I stumbled on a replacement at, of all places, Home Depot. Yes, THAT Home Depot, the mega building supply, garden, power tool emporium that lots of us find not so very far from our own front doors. I found the unlikely candidate in the electronics department of the store for about $3 a can and I bought one just for grins.
The stuff comes in a dark blue 11 oz spray can with a black cap and its called QD Contact Cleaner and its made by a company named CRC. It comes with one of those small spray tubes you stick on the nozzle to spray in tight spots but I found that useful as well for spraying the stuff into my old super contact bottle where I could then use a small paint brush and pipe cleaner to clean my connections without blasting the stuff everywhere. It behaves EXACTLY like my old Super Contact. It rapidly evaporates, leaves no residue and includes none of those contact enhancers that seem to cause more problems than they are worth in the long run.
A few tips about using it:
1. If you spray it into a container to aid use with a brush, only spray as much as you need. Like my old SC, it evaporates from an open container before your very eyes and unless you've got a bottle designed to contain this stuff, it will evaporate away even when capped in storage within days. So leave it in the can until you need it.
2. I found the spray tube and rapid evaporation characteristic could be useful for cleaning in a spot I never tried before - my wall outlets themselves. I switched off the circuit at the breaker and then sprayed the contacts in each outlet the system is plugged into while holding a small rag to catch any drips and switched the power back on a few minutes later.
3. If you are using a brush, dip it in the solution frequently, since it will evaporate off the brush quickly. If using a small enough brush to reach in the individual holes in 9 pin tubes sockets I'd redip it every 2 socket holes or so.
Thats about it. I'm going to go back & buy 3 or 4 more cans for posterity since you never know if they will still stock it 3 months from now. And by the way - for those of you who know such things (I sure dont) the can identifies its contents as Isohexane, Hexane, Methanol, Petrollium Distillates and Carbon Dioxide...
Joe