A lot of good vehicles are being destroyed by this product, and this program.
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By KEVIN HELLIKER
Robert Mueller deals in chemicals for a living -- things that can unstick glue, thin paint, make plastic -- but he'd never seen an order like the one he got for sodium silicate.
The compound is typically used to repel bugs or seal concrete, but this buyer's online order form betrayed a whole different intent: "To Kill Car Engines."
"That worried me a little, so I picked up the phone and called the gentleman," recalls Mr. Mueller, an owner of chemical-firm CQ Concepts Inc. in suburban Chicago.
What Mr. Mueller discovered is that sodium silicate is the designated agent of death for cars surrendered under the federal cash-for-clunkers program. To receive government reimbursement, auto dealers who offer rebates on new cars in exchange for so-called clunkers must agree to "kill" the old models, using a method the government outlines in great detail in its 136-page manual for dealers: Drain the engine of oil and replace it with two quarts of a sodium-silicate solution.
"The heat of the operating engine then dehydrates the solution leaving solid sodium silicate distributed throughout the engine's oiled surfaces and moving parts," says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration publication. "These solids quickly abrade the bearings causing the engine to seize while damaging the moving parts of the engine and coating all of the oil passages."
In a nation packed with experts on how to keep cars running, the engine-killing powers of sodium silicate are a well-kept secret. "I, like, have so not even ever heard of this before," said Robert Lutz, new marketing chief and renowned "car guy" at General Motors Co., in an email.
Often called liquid glass, sodium-silicate solution has been better known for being used to save motors rather than killing them: It is used to stop leaks in the gaskets that seal cylinder heads to engine blocks.
At dealerships across America, mechanics accustomed to fixing engines are battling for the chance to ruin them. "Everybody wants to go first, so I'm probably going to have to make them draw straws," says Jim Burton of Randy Curnow Buick Pontiac GMC in Kansas City, Kan. As service manager, however, he might reserve that thrill for himself. "I can't wait," he says.
Over the weekend, half a dozen mechanics gathered around three clunkers marked for death at Jim Clark Motors in Lawrence, Kan. As Loris Brubeck Jr., the dealership's president, held a stopwatch, the sodium-silicate solution took two minutes flat to kill a 2002 Ford Windstar, and just a few seconds more to kill a 1999 Jeep. But a 1988 Dodge van lasted more than six minutes.
"Sometimes those old engines, they're the hardest to kill," says Mr. Brubeck.
The automotive death sentences are meant to ensure that gas-guzzling old models make no return to the road. As sodium silicate disables an entire generation of junkyard-bound cars, the price of used engines will likely skyrocket, predicts Michael Wilson, executive vice president of the Automotive Recyclers Association. "It's the law of supply and demand."
Before settling on sodium silicate, the government considered other methods of execution, including drilling a hole in the engine block and running the engine without oil. But it concluded that sodium silicate was safest for mechanics and for the environment. In its instructions to dealers, the government says that the federal Food and Drug Administration classifies sodium silicate as GRAS -- "generally regarded as safe."
To engines, however, its damage is irreversible. "Once that silicate plugs everything up, it would be virtually impossible to clean that engine out," says Mr. Burton, the Kansas City service manager.
Consisting largely of ingredients as common as salt and sand, sodium silicate isn't hard to make. "It is widely available and inexpensive," said a spokeswoman for the American Chemical Council. For auto dealers, a car-killing dose costs about $5.
But while manufacturers have plenty on hand, the government failed to warn distributors about the impending onslaught of demand from car dealers.
"It's like the government decided to put every old car in America in mothballs without giving any heads up to mothball" suppliers, says John See, owner of the ChemistryStore.com near Columbia, S.C.
Mr. See's business mostly sells ingredients to soap and candle makers, his largest seller being melt-and-pour soap. But within hours of the federal government on July 24 releasing the details of the cash-for-clunkers program, a dealer called Mr. See and asked about sodium silicate. Up to that point, Mr. See's eight-year-old business had sold only about 150 gallons of sodium silicate a year, mostly for use to waterproof masonry.
But within moments of learning about its new purpose, Mr. See ordered enormous supplies and purchased prime space on Google, so that his company popped up in searches for sodium silicate. Last week, he sold
4,600 gallons of it, and the rush is continuing. "We're working 16 hour days, and we've got friends and family helping out filling orders," says Mr. See.In Grand Rapids, Mich., a company called Cleaning Solutions Inc. received a call from a dealer ordering a large supply for the clunkers program. When an employee recommended investing heavily in inventory and marketing, owner Ron Balk hesitated. In decades of selling the product, he'd never heard of it used as an engine-killer. But a few calls to local dealers convinced him otherwise: They quickly bought out his existing supply, prompting him to order large amounts of the product. "We've been working 12-hour shifts ever since," says Mr. Balk.
Back in suburban Chicago, Mr. Mueller says his company sold 15,000 gallons of sodium silicate last week, up from a typical level of 200 gallons a week. "At one point this week I worked 32 hours without a break," says Mr. Mueller.
His company receives the product in 275-gallon containers and sells it in smaller amounts, often five-gallon pails. This week, he says, "the average dealership is ordering one to three pails, and a five-gallon pail will treat 10 cars."
Long an obscure item in the CQ Concepts catalog, sodium silicate has become "the best-selling product of the year," says Mr. Mueller.