I have a ~£130.00 one and even after a 40 minute session, I'm still having to wash off oily residue with Fairy liquid, hot water and elbow grease.
I bought it to avoid exactly this
.
I've tried a variety of solvents:
Gunk - Messy and ineffective.
Elma Clean 75 - Essentially industrial strength ammonia used by jewellers to clean up their trinkets - wholly ineffective. There's also the issue of what to do with the stuff afterwards...
Halfords Citrus Degreaser - the most effective so far, but still demands an unimpressive amount of hand finishing
I have access to plentiful supplies of Isopropyl alcohol (as recommended by TimO, I think) but TBH I fear for my wooden shed and it's resistance to Fire.
Isopropyl has a stupidly low flashpoint, something like 13°C, and the US cleaner runs up to 65°C - Or am I totally misunderstanding The Physics Of Stuff?
I'd welcome any suggestions as to what solvent is best.
Having said all of the above, I did manage to get ~10,000 miles of service from the original chain and sprockets on the Van Nic.
Before they failed.
Catastrophically.
EDIT: I still like it in as much as when it does it's (feeble) thing, I can be getting on with other anally retentive bike cleaning procedures....