Hi all.  This is my first post on this site.  I've been a handgunner for the past 10 years or so but just reciently bought a Bushmaster M4.  I'm one of those guys who's kind of a freak about cleaning my guns.  At first I paid the big money for Gun Scrubber, but people said just to use carb cleaner because it did the same thing and you can buy cans all day for under a dollar.  I've gotten along great with the carb cleaner, but every once in while I'll see a post where someone will make negative comments about using carb cleaner. So, what's the deal?  Is carb cleaner bad for my guns?

Just be aware that carb cleaner will eat some plastics and that it can strip all the oil off.  I’ve been using brake cleaner for years and find it just as good as Gun Scrubber.  I just keep it away from plastic and paint and remember to oil everything back down.

Hoppy

Certain carb-cleaner have, for lack of a better term, bad stuff in them. However the SuperTech 2000 product commonly sold at Walmart does not have the bad stuff in it and is one that I and others use for rinsing out bore cleaners like Sweets 7.62 which can be ruff on bores if not rinsed out completely.

Mike

PS - BTW, welcome aboard.....

i religiously use gumout carb and choke cleaner. been using it for 10 years.

I was hesitant to use carb cleaner on my AR, but the stuff works great and you can't beat the price compared to Gun Scrubber.  It seems that anything labeled specifically for firearms has to cost 10x as much as something for automotive use.  Case in point: I buy grease for my Garand at the auto parts store in a big tub for the same price as a little container of "gun" grease.

I use carb and brake cleaner all the time.  Carb cleaner is great for removing carbon and leaves a thin dry film lube behind. If soaked in carb cleaner rubber and plastic stuff gets a bit weird (swollen/soft), but just spraying it on my gun and wiping it off or letting it dry has never caused any problems for me. Brake cleaner works awesome as a degreaser/blast cleaner, but strips all lube, paint, etc away and can be very deleterious to plastics and rubbers.

i was under the impression that the carb cleaners had a lubricant in them to help the moving parts in a carb and that the brake cleaner didn't. brake cleaner seems to leave less surface residue. i always lubricate and wipe down with oil anyway.