Blasting an engine?

I have read all the opinions. I use glass bead 80 grit in my business. I have the equipment to blast and can do the job in a cabinet with the engine disassembled. I have rebuilt engines that have been bead blasted. I know a little bit about this.

FIRST, OnkelB was dead on. Glass bead will get EVERYWHERE and is a total pain to clean. It can be cleaned but I would NEVER NEVER NEVER (did I say never?) glass bead with the engine assembled. That stuff will find ways into your bearings and seals and EVERY nook and cranny inside the engine no matter HOW CAREFUL you are sealing the engine. Second, glass bead doesn't imbed in metal. If you us a small diameter tip (small hole outlet for the bead) and train the gun in one spot for quite awhile, it will pit the surface but if you use a 4mm or 5mm tip and move the tip some, it won't do any harm.

Another thing that wasn't mentioned in the thread is that you had best be thinking of powdercoating the engine after glass beading. The surface will be even and smooth and clean but DULL. It will be matte type finish and I don't think it would look real great. I would think that soda or water blasting would produce a brighter final finish if you do blast. Last, if you do powdercoat, I have used semi-gloss black in the past with a krinkle finish and it looks nice. Older engines have pores so if you use a gloss finish with no texture, any imperfection will show up but gloss is nice like on the old GPzs.

I agree with george here, and that was exactly what I did. After I glass beaded the motor disassembled I had the local machine shop use their parts washer to clean it for me. Basically is a big dishwasher that sprays solvent from all directions to get any thing left behind. Then I powder coated the motor. Its been running for two months now going on 2 thousand miles with no problems from inside the motor. I have changed the oil 3 times and filtered it through a paper screen to see if anything was in it like shavings or glass bead. So far totally clean. My best tear down time was 52 min. from a completed bike to the engine totally apart. If you keep track of your parts and enough bench space. I would suggest disassembling the motor first.

bubbap wrote:

... My best tear down time was 52 min. from a completed bike to the engine totally apart. If you keep track of your parts and enough bench space. ...

I might be able to match that time... but my problem would be in the re-assembly... or not:S

Using a manual to follow to get it together may not be the hardest thing I have accomplished, but struggling with limited tools would make it more of a headache... ring compressors, seal pullers, bearing press, degreeing the cams... lots of time on an engine that runs.

But... I'm getting the hint.

Does anyone over there do this process, I dont even know if it has a name:-

www.aloh.co.uk/Pages/sample.htm

Basically a big tank on springs full of 1/2 aq ton of assorted ball bearings agitated by a big motor, head goes in and bearings vibrate and clean and seal the surface.

I had my cylinder head and barrells blasted and was not very impressed I then took them to this place and they were transformed.

stever, this guy is the absolute engine Nazi (think soup Nazi from Seinfeld), his work is second to none. The only problem is the shipping costs added on to the cost of the restoration work, puts it out of reach of most of us. Unless you have a really high dollar, very rare bike, the restoration costs could rapidly exceed the amount that you could ever hope to sell it for. That said, the guy does some beautiful work.

[ www.rsg-technologies.com/


.[/quote]
Very cool. Thanks for enlightening us. I personally found that to be excellent info that I would never have probably ever heard of let alone tried.

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Result

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yes
opinion and speculation, no.