Here's a tool review of sorts. I picked up Harbor Freight's small ultrasonic cleaner. It's about a 0.75 L tank, so not big enough for whole carb bodies or larger stuff, but fine for hardware and smaller parts.
To test, I started with a the timing gear I just picked up to experiment with. Someone has already drilled it out for the 4 degree advance. Here it is straight out of the package, nice and dirty.
Filled the cleaner with warm water and dropped it in.
Buzz.
That did nothing, so I added about 1.5 mL of my favorite solvent, Hoppe's No. 9 bore cleaner.
Because I am a dummy, I forgot that Hoppe's is mainly hydrocarbons (mostly kerosene, I think) and thus hydrophobic.
I ran it anyway. During the first run, the Hoppe's emulsified, and the rotor came out nice and shiny. Here it is against the uncleaned pickup.
I stuck the pickup in next, along with my grimy old wire cutters. Because it's just a little too large in diameter to be submerged, I ran two cycles of 3 minutes each. Here's some good clean wire cutters that work a lot better now.
And here's both parts, clean and ready to be tested.
All in all, I'm happy with it for $32. Despite Harbor Freight's generally cheap products, there are some nice perks. I paid an extra $6 for a 1 year replacement plan. The guy who rung me up said to make a note to myself, and bring it in before a year is up for a brand new one. No questions asked, no receipts or packaging needed. Naturally, it's also replaced for free within that time if it breaks, even if it's from user error. Nice.