Watched a guy at a tractor pull once where the hitch snapped clean off a sled and the whole thing bounced instead of breaking, and that stuck with me way more than it should have. Rigid stuff just snaps when it gets pushed past its limit, but give it somewhere to move and it survives. Your derby story makes more sense than half the woodworking books I own.

Solvent being shot doesn't turn red though, that's the part nobody's explaining. Old varnish mixing with fresh cleaner making cherry juice? Where does the bright red even come from then, because varnish is brown, not red. Rubber O-rings absolutely can break down in the wrong solvent, lots of cheap parts cleaners have ketones or aromatics that eat certain rubbers and they leach dye right into the bath. That's probably exactly what happened, the red was dye coming out of the seals, and your "hundreds of nozzles" just means you never dropped in one with the same seal material. Not rinsing the tank has nothing to do with it, a dirty tank makes the liquid dark, not candy red, so that theory falls apart too.