Soda blasting an assembled triple engine?

1200ts

1200ts

Hero member
Location
USA - Riverside CA
I have a triple motor with only 23,000 miles. It runs good and no apparent problems at all other than a slight oil weep at the cam chain tunnel. So I don't think there is any reason to take it apart. But after many years is has a lot of oxidation on the aluminum. So I am proposing to soda blast it with all the holes blocked off after removing it from the frame. As the soda will wash away with water I don't foresee any problems with this idea???????
 
I have done it with a number of engines in the past and provides a great finish. Engines include triples, MV Agustas, SFC 750. You just need to have a pressure sprayer to get the soda out of the finning.IMG_0469.JPGIMG_0040.JPG
 
Had a twin engine done this way, worked well. On another engine the barrel was so bad it hardly touched it.
 
I had my 120 engine cleaned by a specialist cleaning service using soda. It came up very nicely, though I did remove the outer casings afterwards for additional polishing by the same service. The alternative would be carbon dioxide crystal blasting if you can find a service that offers that. Alternatively, if you have deep pockets, or a huge amount of parts to clean, you can hire a Co2 crystal generator/blasting machine direct from Karcher for a week. I had a quote from them last year, and it was just over £400 for a week's hire.
 
I soda blasted a pair of Ducati carburettors the other day. They were stripped down to the bare aluminium bodies at the time. I forgot to take a "before" photo but they were pretty grubby. It didn't remove all the staining from the alloy, but they came out a lot cleaner than they were. After the soda blast, they went through the ultrasonic cleaner to remove any crap inside and to dissolve out any trapped soda.

dell phf ducati f1.jpg
 
In my experience soda blasting is a lottery. Some alloys it works well on and some it doesn't.
Japanese high pressure die casting is often one of the worst. Some sand cast alloys come up very well.
Locally it's now much easier to get parts vaporblasted so that's what I use.
 
Dellortoman said:
I soda blasted a pair of Ducati carburettors the other day. They were stripped down to the bare aluminium bodies at the time. I forgot to take a "before" photo but they were pretty grubby. It didn't remove all the staining from the alloy, but they came out a lot cleaner than they were. After the soda blast, they went through the ultrasonic cleaner to remove any crap inside and to dissolve out any trapped soda.

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I use a specific carb cleaning solution in my ultrasonic tank, and it does clean the carbs up really well, and then soda blasting finished off the job. If you were happy to block all the orifices up, then using a walnut shell media would also work well.
 
Have a look at this link below, I have laser cleaned all my bikes motors. The best process and no risk of contaminant inside motor and produces a factory finish.

Alloy deep clean

Why bother cleaning them? I thought patina is all the rage these days - and you won’t notice the difference after the next burn out. Ha, Ha. I haven't had a bike burn twice yet, but who knows? Paul
laverdaforum.com laverdaforum.com
 
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