Ditching No Toil, Branded air filter cleaner vs mineral spirits

I've been having issues recently with the no toil oil running of my filters and leaking on to fhe floor. Frustrating 

Anything that is capable of dissolving/removing FFT (or any legit petroleum based filter oil) is going to be, by definition, a petroleum solvent.  None of it is good to get on your skin.  The difference between Mineral Spirits and the branded removers is the price.  You pay a lot more for a lot less with the branded stuff.

Go to HD or Lowes and get a 5 gal bucket and lid, 3 gals of "Odorless mineral spirits" (I don't like the "substitute"), and a box of some good Nitrile gloves.    Submerge the filter and squeeze out.. repeat a few times.  Next work some dawn dish soap through the filter and wash/squeeze with water.  I use a garden hose outside as you don't want this stuff going down the drain.  Filter should come out damn near new, other than residual faint blue staining from the oil dye.

Use the same bucket of stuff for a year or more, loads of filters, until the mineral spirits is so loaded with dirt and oil that it loses effect.  Then drop the entire bucket off at your county dump household chemicals drop and start all over.

FGR01 nailed it! Only thing I'd change is the sizing if you're considering going back to bio at any point: A 2 gallon bucket with lid and one gallon of mineral spirits is cheap enough to try for a bit before committing to the 5g/3g combo...Even that scale will last longer than you'd expect.

The mineral spirits is really good, and affordable, earlier this year I fell for WR products filter cleaner, it works really good, I do not think you will get the 10 filters worth of cleaning out of it like they advertise, I would say mineral spirits or the wr cleaner, also switched to motul filter oil, so far seems like it doesn’t dry out fast and cleans up well.

https://wrperformanceproducts.com/products/f3

The WR stuff looks really cool and convenient in the ads, but rough math says it's about 10x as expensive as mineral spirits.. or more.  I see it as a decent alternative for someone that lives in an apartment or some situation where you don't want buckets of chemicals sitting around and don't go through too many filters.

I got NoToil on the back tire of my Honda, on garage floor.  Soon as I use it up, have about a half a bottle left.  Will try twin air or go back to motor oil.  Might try Liqui Molly.  Pretty sure that’s what my Beta filter is oiled with from Factory.  I’ve also been know to use to much oil on a filter.  I think my Honda calls for 1.7 oz of oil for the filter.  

I recently switched from notoil to Belray and mineral spirits after I had dirt get past the filter on a silty ride. NoToil was my go to for probably 20 years. No more. It does not stay in the foam like the petroleum based filter oils.

totally agree with this method.  Only thing I do differently is I use 2 buckets, 1 "dirty" and 1 "clean" and do the first dunk and rinse in the dirty bucket of solvent, then into the clean bucket for a quick rinse and it is a lot easier to get the residual oil out.  After the dirty bucket becomes saturated, it gets disposed of in an environmentally friendly way, and the clean bucket becomes the dirty and a new clean bucket is started.  I usually grab the 20L pails of solvent when I see it go on sale and keep a stash around.

I use FFT (or belray when it’s real hot out. They’re similar, but beltway is way more viscous) and clean the filters with WD-40 in the ‘big blast’ can. The WD cuts through the oil and then I’ll rinse with water and dawn. This methods has been very reliable for me. 
 

Mineral spirits work, but the bucket method dilutes the solvent quicker than I like and then I’m stuck dealing with disposing of the spirits, cleaning the dunk bucket and refilling it. I did that for two bucket cycles before going with the WD method, and I’ve been really happy with it.