How does one clean stained hoses?
 

I have some old Tygons that are quite badly stained by water wetter and uv dye. Presently they are purple in colour...
Just wondering if anybody have any ideas how I can "wash" them to get rid of the colour?

running water through the hoses has no effect on the colour whatsoever

Any advice will be much appreciated!

Just a thought
 

You might try completely removing them and soaking them in a bleach solution. But, be sure to rinse them well to be rid of all the bleach before reinstalling.

remove hoses, dish of white vinegar, shotgun cleaning rod with cotton wipes on end dipped in vinegar

Same here, except that I used trichlorethylene.
Works great, but don't inhale it...

CD :)

Edit for typo in the name...

Guys, thanks for all the suggestions.

Tried the bleach and vinegar (as well as nail polish remover) methods already.
Had 3 different lengths of the stained hoses soaked in 3 containers of the above mentioned solutions for 3 whole days; unfortunately to no avail...

Turbokeu mentioned trichlorethylen, that sounds greek to me... :p
Any layman terms for that and can it be gotten from pharmacies off the shelf?

Some gasoline would probably clean it out.

It's a solvent cleaner (characteristics here).

In Belgium freely available in DIY and hardware stores.

CD :)

In Canada we use moose urine. Works ok but don't spill it on carpet. Safe to flush when done too

Uhh... In that case I'm really glad my tubing isn't stained... ...

It's Latin, I think.

no it's IUPAC :)

i believe in english it has an "e" on the end, i.e. trichlorethylene

I got long tubes because I have a bong thats located about 5 feet away from my pc
what I did to clean mine was stick a AA battery in one end of the tube(pretty damn good fit for 1/2ID) fill it with some water then spray some tilex in... put another battery in the other end and shake the length of tube so the tilex and water could mix and cover each part of the tube, take out batteries and flush the tubes with water to try to get rid of some of the tilex
dont know how good it is for closed loops though

Now wait, soaking won't do it - you've got to scrub somehow, or just mix up some *sol and let it run through the system for a few days.

Of course...:D

I used a little rag soaked in trichlorethylene and attached to a length of 1.5mm² copper wire to scrub the tubing.

CD :)