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Softening rubbers

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martin_uk:
I see some people have used the boiling water and Winter green oil, but I didnt fancy it.

Found a tip to use Xylene and concentrated Winter Green oil mix.

 Winter green is the more expensive, but bought 500ml and 5ltr Xylene for about £30.

Not economic if you only have a a few rubbers to do, but as I have quite a few decided to give it a try.

You need to be quite careful in handling these chemicals and use recommended protective clothing, ventilation, gloves etc.

I mixed at ratio of about 5 parts Xylene to 1 part WG oil in a medium sized pickle jar with lid.

First tried on inlet rubbers.

The rubbers were rock hard, but swell up  after soaking for a day or too, but dont leave too long.

It seems to work by the Xylene swelling rubber and WG oil then soaking into rubber to maintain flexibility.

Took a while for xylene to evaporate off after removed from mix and rubbers returned to normal size and now quite pliable.

Then tried with a small batch of rubbers including the unobtainable CB750F1 rear seat cowl rubber buffers.

With many of small mounting rubbers at £3 odd each and some rubbers unobtainable, may be of interest.

If the rubber has perished and cracked, this method will not restore.

martin_uk:
Here is a pic of CB750F1 seat pan rubber, two I did earlier and  after a 1 day soak.

DSC_0242 by nitram2010, on Flickr

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