Rub some dish soap on your hands before u start wrenching, rub it in like hand loation... rub some into your nails also... It keeps the grease from sticking there also.

wash with more soap, and HOT water


works find for me

~Nate

The best way to get rid of the smell is to mask it with the smell of a 4 day dead road kill skunk. Rub that on your hands and no one will ever suspect you of working on Diesels.

Any kind of reaction to exposure should be a warning sign. Dermatitus or worse can result. May be cumulative in nature. Seems the skins tollerance for petroleum based products has real limits. Wear the gloves rather than take the risk. Primarily more often a hazzard to everyday exposure usually. On the otherhand a person may not have very much initial resistance. Seems to vary greatly from person to person. Unfortunatley we never know our own tollerance level untill we have exceeded it. A combination of used vehicle fluids can really do a person in. Might be modern additives as I am not aware of as extreme effects in distant times. They may have just been masked though. Or blamed on something else. The odour may be the lesser problem for some.

Ditto............
 

Lemon Juice....it works well, and the light lemony smell afterward goes away quickly.......

I spent a lot of my working life on Motor (Diesel) Ships, and I have probably had most types of fuel, lube, hydraulic, etc. oil.....dripped, spilled, squirted, on me, at one time or another.....good hand cleaner, such as Go-Jo is a must (ever taken a Go-Jo shower?:D )....but in a pinch clean hydraulic or lube oil, with some sugar added for grit.....works almost as good......

.....also Dawn dishwashing soap.....

SB

I just love the smell of Diesel in the morning, smells like Industry!!!

I'll second or third the nitrile glove idea. I hate the smell of latex so I decided to try nitrile. Went to the local medical supply house and picked up a box of 100 for less than $10. Much better price than the local pharmacies and auto parts stores. Best buy I ever made. No more latex smell, and they are tougher than latex.

I also carry a few pairs in the trunk now in case I have to fuel up with a really oily nozzle, like at a truck stop.

Rgds,
Chris W.
'95 E300D

What many of you don't seem to understand is people come on these sites to get advice after something happens. The gloves are a good idea if you are preparing to work on something with deisel fuel and the smell isn't already there. Gloves are of no use if the fuel has already spilled on you. The question wasn't about prevention, it was about seeking a remedy. So all of you with your suggestions for gloves and the like.......thanks for nothing.

biodiesel
 

thumbs up!! :)

and then cleanup with the awesome soap you can make from the glycerin byproduct www.washtyme.com

I've been using Go-jo hand cleaner for about one year now............can't say enough praise about it.

Naturally, the gloves are preferred if you can use them. Sometimes you can't.

I use nitrile gloves, but unless I've only a small job to do, I usually wind up having to wash grunge off of my hands. Guess I'm hard on gloves. I've also never been too afraid to get dirty, which means I often do.
I grew up cleaning up after a wrenching session with Lava, which was a pumice bar. Along came Goop, which seemed to cut grease, but left a funny odor. GoJo, which I believe is either pumice or some other granular material in a citrus-based carrier, works well to cut oil and grease, but doesn't always get at the dirt that makes your hands look dirty. An old machinist friend of mine used to swear by good ol' soap and water.
Combining all of these things, I hit on the following that works better than anything else I've ever used.

• Put a squirt of GoJo AND a squirt of Dr. Bronner's soap on your DRY hands.
• Work it around on your hands, mixing and spreading it around just enough that it is evenly spread onto the dirty spots and won't drip off.
• Start a small stream of water in the sink and pass one hand under the faucet to pick up some. You want just enough water to add to the mix, but not enough to rinse any of it off before it's had a chance to do its job.
• Now work your hands together and scrub the grungy spots. The small amount of water activates the combo of soap and citrus, and the granular stuff cleans the crevices. You man need a brush to get under your nails, of course.
• Once you've scrubbed enough that you can see clean flesh everywhere, rinse with water.
• If necessary (rarely, in my experience, unless I just missed a spot) damp dry on a towel or rag and repeat.

This cuts everything I can throw at it - engine grunge, black diesel-sooted motor oil, gear oil, etc. Certainly diesel fuel alone is no match. And amazingly, your hands smell only faintly of whatever flavor of Dr Bronner's you used (peppermint, almond, etc.), not of petroleum products.
Trader Joe's is now peddling their own clone of Dr. Bronner's soap. It works with this mix too.

A way that works for me, because I often don't have gloves handy, is to put any kind of light NEUTRAL oil on your hands, ru it in, wipe it off on paper towels, then go over your hands with any waterless hand cleaner or any glycerin-type soap, like you use in the bath.

The neutral oil mixes with the diesel and is easy to transfer then. Then the soap gets what's left over.

I have used Pam cooking oil from a spray, Wesson oil, and baby oil, and they all worked very well.

One guy I know follows it up by washing hands in vinegar or lemon juice, then warm water. Never tried it but he swears by it and he doesn't smell like diesel fuel afterward either.

There are probably other ways, and other will provide them, hopefully.

Two words........




Fried chicken...... :D

My problem is that I am always so eager to begin working on my car that I end up forgetting to put on gloves.

I have an Italian neighbor, He simply has every one eat garlic. You can never smell diesel on him. We dont have skunks down here so maybe garlic is the next best thing.

Seriously, I use barrier cream, sorbolene or lanolin (from sheep's wool) on my hands before doing most oily work. It keeps the oil/diesel out of the pores in your skin.

I'm surprised no one has responded with this but.....

I thought the diesel aroma was thought of more like after shave or cologne. We should be basking in the waft of it after a successful job done. :D

BTW - Harbor Freight occasionally has the nitrile and latex gloves on sale ($5 to $7). I always have a few boxes of each in stock.

I rub diesel fuel on my for colonge.