Brake grease more expensive than printer ink?

I’ve heard that ink-jet printer ink is one of the most expensive substances there is. I mean of something you are likely to buy. But I’m wondering now if this award should go to printer ink or brake grease? I noticed today that two small packets of synthetic brake grease go for $7. About the amount to grease two disk calipers or two sets of brake shoes by the looks of tiny packets.

Why is brake grease so expensive? Is it just b/c it is sold in small quantities in retail auto parts stores, so they have to have a profit justification to bother to carry it on the shelves? What do pro mechanics use? In high priced small packets like that? Or do pros buy brake grease in larger containers at a much reduced dollar/ounce price?

@GeorgeSanJose it’s false logic to buy brake caliper lube in such small sizes

This is the way to go

http://www.napaonline.com/Catalog/CatalogItemDetail.aspx/Caliper-Lube-8-fl-oz-Permatex/_/R-BK_7651831_0421636484

When I need brake caliper lube, or anti squeal paste, I always get the larger sizes, and it tends to last me a few years

George,

Anything synthetic for vehicles always demands a higher price.

Why not opt for the regular brake grease that comes in a tube?

I’ve been using it for years without a problem.

Tester

You can analyze anything to death, but it reminds me of my grandfather in the catering business saying if you need eggs it does not matter what they cost. https://www.cardcow.com/images/set153/card00161_fr.jpg

Thanks. I thought that was way overpriced.

The smaller the package the more it costs. Everything is that way.

Buy ketchup in the little packets and I’m sure it’s more expensive than buying a bottle.

Besides have you seen the price for synthetic seeds. Just to plant an acre of synthetics the price is outrageous and if your field gets infected with nanobots…you’ll lose the whole crop.
Don’t even get me going on the labor and machinery involved in harvesting a crop of synthetics.

Next weeks episode; The difficulty of collecting moth balls, without damaging their wings.

Sorry…I just had nothing better to do!!!

Yosemite

Yosemite … lol … hey, I just heard today John Stewart is leaving his show. There’s a comedy job opening available for you!!

@GeorgeSanJose; They’d never hire me…I’m too pretty!!!

Yosemite

@Yosemite, you mean you have a face for radio? LOL!

I work hazardous waste disposal, had a new one, a small jar of white lead, anyone need some or ever used it? That only compares to the few bottles of mercury from a guys father that used it when he worked for the phone company. Wondering cost comparison.

Well at least @Bustedknuckles didn’t say “I was so ugly my mom and to tie a pork chop bone around my neck so the dog would play with me”.

white lead…I remember hearing that word years back as a kid. I’ll have to research.

I remember my dad having Carbon Tet around(1970s), but I don’t remember what we used it for. Cleaning something???

I never found the place again, but I was on a road and needed to water the railroad tracks.
I walked into the woods and found loads of small glass bottles close to the tracks that would have had a cork in them. about 1 1/2 inches round and 4 inches tall, and they said Edison Electric Company.
I should try to find those tracks again those bottles may be of value.

yosemite

Carbon tetrachloride. It’s a pesticide, highly toxic to humans.

Those glass “bottles” sound like glass insulators for power lines. They made millions of them. I doubt of they have any significant value.

No I know what insulators are and look like. These definitely were bottles.

Though they also could have been dumped there by anyone. I thought maybe battery acid to top off lead acid batteries on the trains. Got me.

I think that Carbon Tet was also used as a cleaner for electric components armatures, brushes.
I seem to remember using it for that.
Not that it couldn’t also have been an pesticide and I remember being told it was toxic and not to breath the fumes and always use a small acid brush to apply it.

Yosemite

Thomas Edison having been one of the most prolific and multifaceted inventers in history, the bottles could have been for almost anything. He had a huge lab in Menlo Park, and experimented with just about everything in just about every field.

Here’s a description of Carbon Tet.

Shop class used to use white lead for highlighting letters and numbers on squares and such after you cleaned the rust off of them,also used for a very white pigment .Carbon Tet-solvent from Hell,dont fool with it

Yes, I’ve read and watched many biographies about Edison. He had inventions in almost every field there is.

Thanks for the link @the same mountainbike; all I remember is my dad bringing some home in a couple of small 4-6oz bottles. I don’t recall much about it, so I doubt we used it more than 2-3 times in all the time he had the stuff. I presume he mentioned to someone about a project he was involved in and the person gave him the stuff for a specific use.
My dad was the type that seemed to know how to fix, build, repair, anything. I learned so much from him and forgotten half of what he taught me…it was just too much for one to remember.

He was selling the house to get mom into something she could maintain a little easier before he died and was already going through Chemotherapy and in pretty exhausted shape when I pulled in the driveway one day. He was busting out the front, two step, concrete stoop. It was in perfect shape, no cracking or problems, but the front had sunk a little after 40 years, and it had pulled away from the house and left a 1 inch gap. He said he couldn’t sell the house in that shape.

Yosemite

Carbon tet was bottled and sold by Hoppes for cleaning guns 50 years ago.

From Wikipedia:

“Historically, carbon tetrachloride was used for a variety of purposes. However, once it became apparent that carbon tetrachloride exposure had severe adverse health effects, such as causing fulminant hepatic necrosis, safer alternatives such as tetrachloroethylene were found for these applications, and its use in these roles declined from about 1940 onward. Carbon tetrachloride persisted as a pesticide to kill insects in stored grain, but in 1970 it was banned in consumer products in the United States.”

“Carbon tetrachloride is one of the most potent hepatotoxins (toxic to the liver), and is widely used in scientific research to evaluate hepatoprotective agents.”

“Carbon tetrachloride was widely used as a dry cleaning solvent, as a refrigerant, and in lava lamps.”

2.5 ounces of synthetic brake grease is 10 bucks on Amazon.

A pack of 3-color-plus-black ink for Canon printers that totals, across all 4 cartridges, 1.5 ounces is $44 on the same site, and that’s an incredibly cheap price. Costs me $100 to replace my inkjet cartridges.

Inkjet ink is one of the biggest ripoffs on the planet. For awhile there, when I’d run out of ink I’d just buy a new printer. Save 50 bucks and get a brand new printer that’s better than my old one. Unfortunately the manufacturers caught on and raised printer prices just enough that it doesn’t make sense to do that anymore, which is why I now have a laser printer. Much cheaper printing per page.

We are paying for the packaging,
and
the convenience,
Whether it be ketchup, grease, hand lotion, or ink.
And sometimes, as we’ve discovered, they are opportunistic pirates charging us anything they want because they have us hijacked into needing just that shape, size, or configuration of …package ( like printer inks and catalytic converters )
Couldn’t they just make them all the same ? sure they could, but there’s no money in that.

Add to that the psycological manipulation that we , somehow, MUST have that small quantity. That we can not possibly save supplies and refill later.
( I saved all my daughter’s Gatorade 20 oz bottles to refill with my gallon Coolade to take to work. They are heavy plastic, not wimpy crinkle-up like water bottles, that can withstand multiple cleanings )