That $350 ultrasonic cleaner barely touched my chains
Bought one last spring off a mechanic's recommendation to handle grimy drivetrains. Ran three chains through it with degreaser, still had to scrub every link by hand. Has anyone else dumped money on shop gear that just added extra steps?
Did you run it hot enough and for how long? I found out the hard way that most of those cheap units don't hold temp well, so the degreaser never gets activated the way it should. The fix for me was pre soaking the chain in a jar of solvent and then floating that jar in the water bath, so the chain gets hit with clean solvent instead of its own dirty runoff. Kind of turns the whole thing into a double boiler setup, which is dumb for a machine that's supposed to save time, but it actually worked on the gunk mine was missing. At that point I'm basically paying $350 for a heated jar though, so I feel your pain on the extra steps.