Soda Blasting Carb Bodys & Parts?? Thoughts??

I am working on some carbs that the aluminum is not looking so good. I have not tried the Lemmon Juice Boil out trick on these yet. Was wondering if anyone has soda blasted their carbs and if you had any trouble with plugged passages after blasting. I had some carb bowls bead blasted but I was able to get the media out of the enrichment wells with no problem. Just looking for some thoughts on this.

 

i guess an ultra sonic machine works great, just not sure how it works, where to get, and how much

 

Not sure if that would remove corrosion. Good Thought though.

 

Boiling lemon juice will darken the aluminum bowls. I like to think of it as a patina but if you want shiny do not boil the aluminum in lemon juice. What the boiling juice IS good for is to get all the rust off of the steel parts. Also, the hot liquid softens the crud in the enrichment circuit of the bowls. Just blow the crud out with carb spray while the bowls are still hot. Pull them out of the boiling juice one-at-a-time and do the spray.

 

I bought 5 pounds of baking soda and a cup-fed sand blaster and I'm ready to do an engine and some carb racks, and rims, and whatever else gets in my way ??
Since baking soda dissolves in water, then any hidden soda would dissolve by washing the parts. I plan on blasting the carbs assembled, taped, and off the rack, and I won't blast into the throttle seal area. (that's the plan)

Does baking soda dissolve into solvents or diesel fuel?

 

did you buy blasting soda because soda at the grocery store dosent work very well at all

 

You need blasting soda and you'll need the proper gun to shoot it with.
I would think you could shoot through that 5lbs of regular soda pretty quick and not really affect much.

I bead blasted a set of really corroded parts carbs for the XS last year at work where I have large blasting cabinet. Taped off all openings and the pilot adj screw. They came out looking great.

Next project, I'm going to get a box of the walnut shells and see how they do.

 

Compared with using baking soda, I still like the comments a while ago about using plain store vinegar to soak & clean your carbs - cheap, easy, and no problems with getting rid of the stuff once you're done. Wish I would have known about this a year ago. I'm trying this way next time I have to clean carbs.

 

That's what I'm curious about -- was telling a coworker about this, and he hadn't heard of such a thing. Thought the stuff might clog up the gun and such -- might I trouble you for some details on this?

 

I tryed white vinegar and it didn't work. I must be missing something. It really didn't do a thing. Are there different kinds of white vinegar? As far as soda blasting. I was thinking that a guy could use just one of those cheap sand blasters that look like a spray gun. I have not looked at Harbor Freight to see what they have. A blast cabinet would be good since you could recycle your media. We had a guy soda blast my Trans Am and that was the best since it did not damage any metal or glass. THe guy was able to get in around the glass and get all the paint out of there. Just seems like a good idea and the soda should wash out with water and air pressure.

 

Vinegar is a long-term soak. It can take days to get all the gunk out. You have to scrub with a toothbrush every few hours and place the parts back into the vinegar.

 

I let the parts hang in there for 2 days. My shop smelt like a salad bar LOL I guess I didn''t give it enough time.

 

my gosh...just use the lemon juice and if they darken just buff 'em with tobasco(not kidding)...simple and less messy

 

I'll try that. I'm sure you have all seen this. You know how the aluminum turns a dark grey and has white frost like stuff stuck in th hardest places to get at. Then when you clean it of with a brush you see darker spots. I have a couple of sets of carbs that are like that. When I did the lemmon juice boil out before the carbs were in pretty good shape. I didn't want to make it any worse. I was thinking these were beyond what the mild acid that lemmon juice could help with. Thanks I'll boil them up and see what that does. At least they are spares for the moment and I'm not in a hurry to get these on a bike.

 

You could try just boiling water first and see what that does. No harm no foul if it does not come out perfect.

The vinegar dip requires scrubbing with a toothbrush every couple of hours. If you do not scrub it is a waste of time. Even so, some types of grease_grime does not come off with vinegar. A boiling water dip should get the road grime off.

The vinegar IS good at removing rust if you scrub with a toothbrush every couple of hours for a couple of days. It depends on how much rust is there.

After the vinegar dip I finish with a wire brush wheel on a Dremel if there is pitting from the rust going deep.

 

I've been playing with white vinegar, lemon juice and lime juice.

What I found is that white vinegar works WONDERS to remove rust and corrosion... from SOME things. You know the bracket the throttle cable plugs into on top of the carb rack? I had one that was grey and fuzzy. I dropped it and my worst set of carb hats in white vinegar. IT WORKED MARVELOUSLY. (Did require occasional toothbrush scub and reimmerse.)

So I tried it on a horribly grey-stained cast sprocket cover (outer engine cover) and it did nothing at all.

My best results on stained cast aluminum so far have been with boiling lime juice, it seemed to work better than lemon juice. Google research shows it's slightly more acidic than lemon juice.

I'm going to keep experimenting on this nasty cover (it's eventually going to get powder-coated so I don't care) to see what gives the best results.

 

I've done a bit with white vinegar too, refer earlier posts. The vinegar works best on the zinc plated steel parts as bigfitz points out above. It dissolves the zinc oxide quickly and the rust more slowly. It also softens the carbon deposits on brass parts but it won't do much to the aluminium bodies. So far my best result for these has been with 50/50 mix of glass beads and soda, at around 35psi at the gun with a 3mm nozzle. The soda is not aggressive enough on its own to remove the oxide or profile the metal surface, it just cleans off any softer contaminants. If you want a nicely stippled uniform surfarce add glass beads at fairly low pressure. These peen the surface with millions of little rounded dents. If the pressure is too high the beads break and become much sharper, ruining the peening effect. Wet glass bead blasting lubricates the surface with water reducing the cutting effect. This is the best process if you have access to the gear but you will still get a nice effect with a dry blast if you take it slow at low pressure.