posted 01-24-2002 06:30 PM                  

This product is the best available method to maintain the weather stripping and rubber parts on your car. While it is available from other sources, the prices are much higher. One tube goes a very long way so please take this into account when ordering.

If you desire to participate please contact Jim directly as I have no involvement other than doing this posting for the Allante group. They have more than enough participation to make the minimum on their own, but I thought maybe some of you might want to get in on the deal.

Here is their message

Krytox III is a GO!! We already have enough interest to meet the distributors minimum. Therefore, the St. Louis-Gateway chapter of the AAG will purchase the Zrytox in quantity and reship it to members at our cost. I’m going to put the costs and ordering info in the next two paragraphs, and the technical info after. That way, those of you who are familiar with Krytox can quit reading early.

One of our members is going to re-post this on the Prowler and DeLorean boards, and we welcome our fellow car enthusiasts to participate. As always, a to-the-penny accounting will be available at the close of the project.

The bad news is that costs are up for shipping and envelopes; the good news is that a 2 oz. tube of Krytox is still $19. A member wrote to me that Ecklers is up to $31.99 plus S&H (used to be $5.95), which puts a 2 oz. tube around $38 from one of the few places you can get it. Our numbers are $19.00 a tube, $0.40 to ship it to my place, $0.39 for a 4x7 padded envelope, $0.05 for a label/laser toner, and $0.80 for postage. That adds up to $20.64 per tube. Let's add $0.02 for my time (which many say that's precisely what it's worth!), and $0.04 for gas/wear-and-tear for the Yukon, and make it a even $20.70 per tube ($0.30 more than last time). A buck extra to be donated to the general fund of the Gateway AAG chapter would be appreciated, but certainly not necessary.

As I don’t want this to drag on, as the last one did, I need to hear from you by February 9th. Respond to this, or email me, how many tubes you want. I will order a couple extra for those out-of-town, in a coma, or who otherwise missed this post but still want some. Please send a check for the proper amount to: Jim Heslop, 302 Paddock Road, Belleville, IL 62223-1108 or PayPal me at jimheslop@hotmail.com. If the ship-to is an address different than on the check, please include same.

Our distributor is now packaging 3M’s PF-5060 “Specialty Fluid” in four ounce bottles for $10. Because Krytox is so “bulletproof,” you’ll be sorry if you get any on your paint! It won’t hurt the paint, it’s just a bitch to remove. PF-5060 will dissolve it, and, in fact, the stuff we get is “reclaimed” as it has been previously used to coat hard disk drive platters with Krytox. It’s very volatile (about that of acetone), so Krytox is dissolved in it, the platters are dipped and then put under vacuum. The PF-5060 “flashes” off, leaving a very thin, and very consistent, layer of Krytox. They condense the vapors, and our distributor buys it and resells it as “Krytox Remover.” Some irony in there somewhere! Parcel Post shipping is within a nickel of Priority Mail, so let’s just use the free PM box with the $3.50 flat rate. The postage included in the Krytox tube should cover the extra UPOS to me charge, so just leave it $13.50 each.

Now for the technical stuff and why your Allante needs this stuff—reading time: four minutes.

The common name for Krytox is oxirane, and the registration number is 60164-51-4. According to DuPont: “Krytox® is a PerFluoroPolyEther (PFPE)--also called PerFluoroAlkylEther (PFAE) or PerFluoroPolyAlkylEther (PFPAE). Krytox® fluorinated oils are a series of low molecular weight, fluorine end-capped, homopolymers of hexafluoropropylene epoxide. The polymer chain is completely saturated and contains only the elements carbon, oxygen, and fluorine; hydrogen is not present. On a weight basis, a typical Krytox oil contains 21.6% carbon, 9.4% oxygen, and 69.0% fluorine.” Get all that?

Krytox is a clear liquid of varied viscosities, depending on the length of the polymer chain. Krytox is also available in grease form by mixing it with polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE) (also available with molybdenum disulfide or sodium nitrite added for severe applications and corrosive enviornments, respectively). There are eight viscosities of both the liquid and three lines of grease. Cadillac sells both the liquid (in a bottle with an applicator cap) and the sixth most viscous grease, called GPL205. Krytox is designed to be a high performance lubricant, with countless applications, including the above-mentioned thin-film coating of hard drive platters to mold-release agents to bearing/gear lubrication. In the automotive world, GPL205 is most widely used to coat the inside of spark plug boots to prevent bonding between the spark plug and boot in these days of 100K tune-up intervals. GM also recommends GPL205 (and the liquid GPL105) as a high-performance weatherstrip lubricant/protectant. It is also the only stuff known to man to stop the annoying squeak of an Allante hardtop. A little goes a very long way and lasts a long time.

Many car owners use a silicon-based product such as Armor-All (or one of the thousand look-alikes) on their flexible rubber. In fact, this is actually harmful to the rubber in the long term. The problem is not that silicone oils hurt the base rubber, rather they can "hurt" the additives that are in the rubber. Rubber products are formulated to perform the tasks intended, and therefore differ chemically. The main enemies of the soft rubber used in tires and weatherstripping are UV from the sun, and ozone from the atmosphere. To combat the UV, they add carbon black (which is why it's black and not color-coded to your paint!). The carbon black adsorbs the UV and degrades to a grayish compound, which is why the rubber turns slightly gray with age. To combat ozone, a wax-like compound is added as a sacrificial protectant. Like the zinc ingot on your boat's outboard engine, this stuff is meant to be "eaten" first, therefore protecting the rubber. This only works on rubber items that are flexed, as the flexing forces more wax to the surface to replace wax that has given its life for the cause. This action is called "blooming" wax to the surface. (This is also the cause of "dry rot" on tires not used very often; no flexing, no replacement wax is "bloomed" to the surface, and the ozone gets to eat the rubber). Now we have come to the problem. The waxes used as sacrificial protectants are usually dissolved by silicone oils, and hence are removed from the surface. No wax, no protection, eventual damage. And because they do not last long, if the silicon products are not used very frequently, you will eventually have owner-induced UV damage!

As an alternative to Krytox, Griot's Vinyl and Rubber Protectant product is quite good, and some other products that do not contain silicone oils are Black Again and Wurth Rubber Care. Avoid Tire Nu--it used to be good polymer stuff from Japan, but they make it here now and have downgraded it to compete with the silicone Armor-All crowd. Also, the Lexol people (Summit Industries), have introduced "Vinylex" which is silicone-based, but they claim it's "wrapped up in polymers" and won't do bad things. Don't know about that, but I'm already using a polymer! One final product is called Zymol, and it will appeal to the homeopathic crowd--it's made from glycerin and avocados!

A couple of final notes. A simple answer to the oft-asked question of "why use it if it's so hard to get and so expensive?" is that GM recommends it! They know slightly more about the engineering/chemistry of my GM cars than I do. And it's not hard to get--walk into any GM dealer and go to the parts counter! As to the expense, that's the reason for the Krytox Project! Lastly, if you haven't used Krytox, you ought to try it--it's really different. Most dealers keep some for shop use (mainly for Allante owners driven to the brink of insanity from the hardtop squeaking!). See if you can borrow it and try it! You might be sorry you missed the Krytox Project! This stuff is really special, and I hope that some other users will offer supporting replies to this post as to how well it really works. If you want some, let me know.

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2001 Silver Prowler
Mud Flaps Front & Rear
Silver Shimmers
Ceramic Brakes
Chrysler Cover
1993 Allante
1981 Delorean
1979 Limited Edition & 1975 anniversary MGB's
1998 & 1986 Corvette's

posted 01-25-2002 01:35 PM                  

http://allante.org/anetjan3/index.htm

Scot

posted 01-26-2002 06:11 PM                  

I tried to help out the Delorean group and the Prowler group by posting Jim's Krytox submission on both of their boards. I felt that perhaps some of them might be interested in joining in on a group purchase of a great product at a fantastic price.

The Prowler group, who usually won't be interested in something unless it boosts HP by 20% or makes the car run in the high 11's has showed significant interest. They have a classy board and welcome ideas and postings about new products.

The Delorean group decided that it was SPAM and deleted both posts! Even after they read it and realized that Jim was “doing the deal” for no profit and also owned a Delorean they still deemed it SPAM.

Anyway, they suggested that I repost it with a better explanation as to what the product is and what it does! Naturally, I won't bother, but I do find it interesting that they are all so interested in John Delorean's actual birthday and what celebrities own a Delorean but yet they were not interested in preserving one. They seem to have their priorities a little bit mixed up.

Scot