Fishy smell when cracking off a nut

[Dave20046]

Quick, mundane, question; just cracked off a stubborn bolt on the bike, there was plenty of old lubricant back there - it immediately emitted an overpowering fish smell which travelled through the garage and throughout the building.

Is it really just degrading old oil? it's only a year old if that. I've snapped open nuts before and thought I smelt something so kind of always wondered but never had it reak out a whole building. Just curious. Oh and is it normal?


cheers

[joshwalker094]

you call the missus " bike", you strange man.
on serious note, i have no clue to the answer you are seeking
sorry i was no help

[JamesMio]

A fishy smell when cracking off normally means Sir has gone to the added effort of pushing a couple of scampi fries up each nostril prior to getting started.

Aka a luxury tug around these parts.

It all depends on how tight the bolt is and the length of tool......the longer the tool the better as they say, if ya too isn`t very long, you`ll need to put more effort in to get a satisfactory out come.....and this is the smell your getting....you`ve followed through.

Well, your bike looks damn fishy, why shouldn't it smell that way too?

[andrewsmith]

You been cracking one off while working on the bike?

You need to change your thread lock

Where was the said bolt?

[Dave20046]

.well I have no idea what fueled all that unwelcome innuendo. And Ralph that's just uncalled for, you're definitely not allowed a go on it now.
It was the front spindle and I've never known anything like it,it was in my car briefly yesterday lunchtime ... this morning my car still reaks.smells like natural gas,had to open all the windows

Not to be too serious, but, amines give off a smell of rotting fish and mercaptans are the smell you get from a gas leak. It is added to the gas flow as "natural" gas doesn't actually have an odour, but, so mercaptans are added because they have a noticible odour even in low level concentrations.

Perhaps if you or someone used a lubricant with sulphur present within its make-up, and being on the front spindle and for over a year, repeated heating up and cooling down could have broken down the chemical structure into shorter organic chains to give the mercaptan odour.

Not so sure about the amine odour, unless someone used some industrial loc-tite type paste on the nut. Amines and epoxies are avalible in two part creations that will go solid when reacted, but, if they used too much amine it wouldn't have all reacted and been left after all the expoxy had reacted.

Just my two cents worth...

[Dave20046]

Thanks for that, I was wondering how hot the spindle gets imagined it would be negligible for some reason. The grease was Castrol l&m high temp bearing grease. I've smelt it before, definitely on cv joints on old cars and probably on bikes too but this was extremely powerful. Wafted through the house adjacent to the garage , which then had to be aired out.

I was thinking if it was oil based it could explain the fish smell, yes I'm simple, sulphurs an interesting one- I associate egg with sulphur (yes I have food on my mind a lot) there could have been an 'afterpunge' of egg but the fish was striking

Some plastics when burned or overheated can have a fishy smell, I appreciate you don't have burnt plastic but I was just saying