Soda blasting a carb

[gimpyrobb]

We had a thread about soda blasting a carb before rebuilding it. Anyone know who's thread that was or has a link? TIA.

[kyken]

This might be what you are looking for???
http://www.aircooledtech.com/tools-o.../soda_blaster/

From link
Cleaning Axles

[randyscycle]

Vacca Rabite was the poster of the thread. It was about his Porsche carbs he'd blasted if I remember correctly.

[militarytrux]

try to avoid hitting the areas where the gaskets seat.

[gimpyrobb]

Zach? Any help? I looked through all the threads you started and couldn't find it.

[Barrman]

Chris,
Kwai started soda blasting stuff and loves how they turned out. Contact him if you can't find the thread.

[vacca rabite]

Yes, it works. its cheap and it works better then any carb cleaner I have ever seen.
I'll have to look for the thread.



Zach

[vacca rabite]

I just went through every thread that I started on this BBS, and I can't find it. I also tried searching for "carb" "soda" "blasting" and other search terms and can't find it. I know it was here though.

Anyway, I'll just post my rave here.

I tore down the carbs, except the butterfly mechanism due to it having a roll pin that is known to get stuck and destroy that butterfly arm.

the carbs I cleaned are a pair of 20 year old Weber IDF carbs. they had varnish, gunk, and trash inside and out. I had read the article that was posted by Kyken, and decided to give it a shot. If it did not work, into the berrymans they would go.

I already had a siphon blaster (one of those blast from a bucket jobs). If you don't have one, they cost about $15 at HomeDespot. They look like this:

I went and picked up 6 pounds of the cheapest baking soda I could find. IIRC, it was more or less a dollar a pound, and I went through 1.5 pounds of it.

At this point, I ran air through the blaster to make sure it was TOTALLY free of the aluminum oxide that I had last used. Once I felt sure about that, I just jammed the siphon into the box of baking soda and went to town.

I THINK it took me ~30 minutes per body to get them spotless clean inside and out. After blasting away all the junk, each carb got rinsed off in the hottest water I could stand to put my hands under, steel joints were sprayed with WD40 to remove the water, and the bodies were dried with an air hose. Each cavity and passage got rinsed, a quick shot of carb cleaner and then shot with 90PSI of air (the same setting that I had my compressor set to for the blasting).

To the poster that said not to blast the gasket surface - I blasted the ever living heck out of the gasket surface. There was zero damage done to the soft aluminum body. The etching you can see in the pic from the post above was due to two decades of corrosion under the gasket.

Here is another picture. To this day I kick myself for not taking before shots.


I did take a picture of the jet stacks before cleaning them, though. You can see what they look like compared to the brass on the butterflies and plugs above.


That said, there is a NEW new fangled, even cheaper process that some of the guys I know have been experimenting with. Dipping the carb bodies in straight Pin Sol. Read all about it here on my other little home on the web:
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.p...=PineSol++carb

Zach

[kwai]

I have started soda blasting. Picked up the 15lb soda blaster from harbor freight. It works great. The soda blasting is much more gentle than sand blasting. It doesn't etch the metal. It will take off the anodizing on the carb body if you overdo it. I have cleaned the carbs, fuel pumps and painted data plates. Nothing works better on painted data plates than soda blasting. 30 seconds and your done. I have done several now on a siren and a couple of trailers.

Here before/after on a dataplate:


Before (it started out completely covered and this is after a couple of swipes):




After 30 seconds:

[Barrman]

Seing those Weber jet stacks brings back nightmares. I have two complete zip log bags full of 45DCOE jet parts. I need to clean them all. Thanks for bringing this back up Chris.