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Great driveway oil drip/spill cleanup product


MCfan

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Just wanted to share my recent experience on cleaning up a nasty oil spill on my driveway.   The villain in this story is a broken plastic line to an oil pressure gauge mounted under the dash of my '70 Monte Carlo.  The hero is an amazing product I found at Walmart (of all places!) called NviroClean.  If you are not aware of this product (as I was not) you may want to give it a try the next time you need to remove oil or grease drips/spills on a garage floor or driveway.  It is a light, dry powder that is easy to apply, sweep up and even re-use.  A 2 pound bag costs $4.97 and should last a long, long time under normal conditions.

The story: Upon returning to my Florida home for the winter in late October, I prepped my '70 4-speed for weekly cruising and errand-running and took it for a brief shake down trip around the neighborhood.  I soon smelled hot oil and saw some smoke coming from under the driver's side so I knew there was a minor oil leak somewhere.  An initial investigation revealed engine oil on the driver's header collector and head pipe going back to the muffler.  It looked like it might have oozed from the rear of the valve cover gasket on that side so I tightened all of the cover bolts evenly and then crawled under the car with spray de-greaser and rags to clean the existing oil from the exhaust system.  I called that good, thinking (foolishly) I had solved the problem.

A few days later I hoped into the Monte to head down to the monthly Swap Meet at Muscle Car City.  She fired right up and I carefully and slowly backed out of the garage and down the full length of our recently re-paved driveway confident that I had solved the burning oil problem.  However, when I pulled off the highway just two miles latter at the swap meet,  oily smoke began pour up outside the driver's door and coating the window.  Now I knew I had a major oil leak because I saw an even, solid line of fresh oil on the pavement where I had just turned off but I was unsure what the failure could be.  Subsequent inspection revealed that the small plastic oil line from the block to the oil pressure gauge under the dash had somehow contacted the driver's side header collector and was melted onto it.  That was obviously the cause of the original burning oil smell. I did not see that when I was de-greasing the exhaust system and apparently snapped the now brittle line off just in front of the header.  That allowed engine oil to be pumped in a small but steady stream onto the driveway and street all the way to the swap meet.  I quickly placed a secure plug in the oil pressure port in the block but now had a major mess to clean up from my driveway.

To say my wife was upset that I had "ruined" our newly re-paved driveway would be an understatement.   I needed to remove the spilled oil but that is almost impossible on porous cast concrete pavers.  I tried soaking the line of oil with liquid de-greaser and then a concentrated Dawn solution followed by pressure washing with a turbo nozzle at 2800 psi but a deeply ingrained oil stain was still very visible (see photos).   Remembering that I had successfully used clay kitty litter to remove a large gas/oil mixture spill from a concrete storage unit floor in MN, I went to Walmart to get a bag of that to try next.  While at Walmart, I suddenly remembered that I had seen a special oil removal product in the automotive section several years ago.  A Walmart employee helped me find this product they now carry called NviroClean.  I was a bit skeptical but the bag said it was more effective than kitty liter and could be re-used up to five times plus it cost less than kitty litter so why not try it.

Yesterday was the first cooler, lower humidity day we've had in SWFL this fall so I went to work applying the NviroClean product to the ugly oil stain on my driveway pavers.  I just rubbed it into the stain using leather gloves (because the pavers are fairly rough)  and then brushed it in thoroughly with a stiff plastic bristle scrub brush.  I left it to sit overnight and when I vacuumed it up this morning, all but the faintest trace had been removed!  Best of all, my wife was so pleased with the results that she let me out of the dog house with a stern lecture about never letting that happen again!

I hope other members will give this product a try if they want to remove oil drips or spills from their driveways or garage floors.  Following are a couple of before, during and after treatment photos:

 

 

 

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I will have to head to wally world and look that stuff up. I have several spots on my garage floor from having pulled the motor a couple of time plus all of the past oil leaks I have had.

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