This topic seeks to show and tell examples, and discuss solutions. Please show some if you have experienced this too.
Post #2 will be an index and also contain a list of suggested/tested surface treatments.
Who is the evil person that invented this cheap rubber?
Why do vendors use this crappy stuff to build things?
What can be done to repair or remove the gooey layer?
Even some electrical wire insulation is made with this and is miserable to touch,
but i have plenty of 20+ year old power cords and other items made of rubber that are still holding up fine.
Here are some examples i have found recently,
IR Thermometer with sticky handle grip/battery cover
rubber grommets (never opened) covered in liquid goo
Spotlight from home depot with sticky grip and rear cover
Lightsaber grips also suffer this fate……… I no longer have any rubber left on the plastic grips.
To my knowledge, after searching extensively there is nothing that can stop it happening over and over, it’s just the crappy rubber. Best you can do is rub off the sticky goo and wait for it to happen again.
The worst stuff for it is items that have been covered in rubber effect coatings, rather than solid rubber.
Yes i have noticed that too, there is hard plastic underneath that is covered with this fake rubber compound. It looks and feels good at first, but before long its crap.
It is so nasty and ruins perfectly good lights, sabers, tools and other stuff—anything it touches.
I’m leery of soft ‘grippy’ materials. Lately, overmolded handles on tools seem almost unavoidable.
YouTuber ‘AvE’ addressed deteriorating screwdriver handles a few years ago. Mild foul-language warning:
I’d like to try some wooden-handled screwdrivers when I wear out my current set. Felo makes some that get good reviews, like this 5-piece slotted and Phillips set.
Look up “phthalates” — those were used as plasticizers everywhere until their ability to mimic human hormones became known.
They’re being replaced by a large number of different substances, mostly not well understood yet.
The big problem with plasticizers is that they diffuse out of whatever hard plastic they were added to — that “new car smell” and oily film inside new car windows is plasticizer leakage.
I think the gummy oily “rubberized” grips now prevalent are new type plasticizers.
As usual, large scale testing on human subjects takes place in the market. That’s what we’re experiencing.
I also have it on the inside of my BMW E91 door handle pulls (inside) - not the actual handles which you pull to open the door, but the actual grip you hold to close the door. On those it’s about 7mm thick and my daughter loves to pick……… the passenger side looks/feels like it’s been eaten by rabid mice with sticky spit.
Really is annoying.
Leave any rubberbands in an attic with sunlight streaming in, so might be heat and ozone combined, and they’ll lose any’n’all elasticity and snap when you touch them. Worse when they dry out on the outside but still have a creamy nougat center.
I’ve had some limited success with a two-step procedure:
1- clean the surfaces with WD-40. If the item continues to ‘dissolve’ - trash it!
2- rub in a small amount of silicone grease, the NSF type doesn’t have petroleum aromatics (which would further the solvability) and after some time, remove the excess with a clean cloth.
It’s not a permanent solution, has to be done at various times when the stickiness comes back. I think the silicone fills / displaces the phthalates.
Affected items:
Handle of Electrolux Dustbuster - super sticky and super annoying.
Radio Volume button of my 2001 Mk4 Jetta (replaced twice since I liked the rubber feel … next time will just try to spray paint it).
1987 Mercedes steering wheel: usually “STP Son of a Gun Protectant” seems to fix that for a while (even though you are not supposed to use it on vehicle controls). Come to think of it, I have not tried that on the above 2 items yet. For some reason its been hard to find this stuff in stores lately.
What year model is that? i heard from a mechanic friend that there were some years that some of the German car companies had used some degradeable plastic for the wiring insulation as a “green” move for disposal and recycling etc. Unfortunately it would degrade on running cars and cause shorts in the harness.
The battery covers and sides of some cell phones I’ve owned did this. One was a Sony Ericsson. Sat for probably 10 years and the back turned to goo. Took me about 15 minutes with rubbing alcohol to get it off. The other product is called Lift-off. petroleum based like Goof-off, but not as smelly and leaves no smelly residue. I don’t know if they make it anymore though.
The issue is in the formulation of the rubber coating. Plasticizers break down over time and the long chain polymer molecules break up, so the plastic loses its integrity and separates. Sort of like polymerization in reverse.
I no longer have any rubber left on the plastic grips.
