Budget Soda Blaster

once again this forum rocks, i was wondering how i could clean up the side covers on my engine, sound cool definatley going to do it, so you guys just use the straight powder in either set up, or do you make a soda and water solution then do it, havent tried but it seems that you would have the problem of un even distribution of the soda, will either style of gun have no problem sucking up the soda?

nedrowjoe wrote:

once again this forum rocks, i was wondering how i could clean up the side covers on my engine, sound cool definatley going to do it, so you guys just use the straight powder in either set up, or do you make a soda and water solution then do it, havent tried but it seems that you would have the problem of un even distribution of the soda, will either style of gun have no problem sucking up the soda?

If you are doing the smooth covers on the engine you will need to polish it afterwards. It will remove crud and oxidation but it will leave the surface dull. The soda does a great job on the rough areas like the block and jugs..

DO NOT mix with water it needs to be dry so it can flow.

Of course the more pressure the better it will shoot. I like the gravity gun myself.


This is what I used to polish the covers, a cheap drill with some buffs and some aluminum polish. I like the Wenol but the Mothers Mag and Aluminium paste works well to.

It is a tedious job and not fun but the bling factor afterwards is very rewarding

I sure do appreciate ya'll putting this soda blasting info. on here. I just started restoring my 76 KZ900 that I've had since I was 18. I am new to this site and I'm finding it very helpful. My bike was stolen several years ago and I kind of put it on the back burner for too long.

The reason for the people saying not to paint after using soda is because it does not rough the surface up enough. It will remove oxidation, paint not as well. use it with dry powder. I made a cabinet out of a clear rubbermaid container. To keep the majority of the powder contained. It works well it is easy to polish afterwards. as it does not rough the surface up too much. If you haven't give it a try yet do it. If you need to remove paint try a sand blaster it will save time and a lot of mess.

thompsonmx100 wrote:

The reason for the people saying not to paint after using soda is because it does not rough the surface up enough. It will remove oxidation, paint not as well. use it with dry powder. I made a cabinet out of a clear rubbermaid container. To keep the majority of the powder contained. It works well it is easy to polish afterwards. as it does not rough the surface up too much. If you haven't give it a try yet do it. If you need to remove paint try a sand blaster it will save time and a lot of mess.

X2 I agree with every word you said. Sand on steel soda on aluminum. I also use sand on the plastic body parts before paint. The perfect rough up for paint on plastic.

Used baking powder on a set of 29 Smoothbores made them look new!Harbor Freight has both grades of the Armex industrial soda in a lot of their stores.I found Arm & Hammer baking soda in 13.5 lb bags at Sams Club for 6.85 per bag. It is with the swinming pool supplies.

I thought this would be a good addition to this welfare sodablaster thread. I bought a cheapo gravity-feed blaster and got some recycled glass media, but didn't want to lug my compressor out of the basement, so I built a ghetto blast cabinet. It's just a rubbermaid bin that I duct taped a little window in and cut a hole for my arm and airhose in the side.







and after a little sanding with 600:



and best of all I can blast in the house, no mess, and it weighs nothing, so I can take everything with me if I need since it is a rubbermaid bin after all

Nice setup - perfect, and you can get cheap, HUGE rubber bins for larger stuff too.

... looks like alot of sanding scuff on the cover... :dry: Would this be avoidable by using just the soda/glass blaster on a nice high pressure?

I've heard that soda gives alot shinier finish, but I could be wrong.

I only gave it a quick sand to clean it up a bit, with progressively finer paper and some jewelers rouge it will look perfect, this was just to give a quick before and after.

Just an update, as has been mentioned I believe earlier in this very thread, the cheapo gravity fed blasters like mine have a small feed hole so I was getting congestion, I drilled it out a bit and it worked fantastic. BUT I was going through the media in the hopper really fast, so I more than doubled the media capacity by just threading the side of a drink bottle onto the hopper fill hole.



now it blasts really well, I love this thing!

I used your Rubbermaid idea, just a trial setup on a cheapo container. I need to make the acess hole gaskets real tight, might use an old innertube or something.



I wound up removing one of those gaskets and just making a small hole in a new one just so the blaster hose fit. I got alot of blow-by on the otherside so I was jamming towels in by my arm.

This is definitely on the end of season cleaning to do list;)