[prestadude]

My dad sold industrial degreasers and we always had a 5 gallon can of trichloroethylene in the garage for cleaning parts. It is a fantastic cleaning solvent. I remember putting greasy bike parts into a pie tin full of TCE and you could literally see the grease jump off the parts. When I was done, I would use the dirty TCE to kill weeds in cracks on the driveway (so much for environmental stewardship although this was 40 years ago). I am probably a walking cancer timebomb now but boy did I have a clean bike!