Manky Monkey Motors

Apologies if I spoke about this previously guys........Has anyone ever tried it with any success? I want to clean the surface of my axle casing . It is covered in hundreds of small indents ,that I cant seem to get the surface rust out of ,as everything I try seems to skim over the top of the dents,hence the soda try out.Hopefully getting the soda next week.
          

I'm assuming that's a finer version of bead or grit blasting? Can that be done at home then Rod?

Yes ,its easy to set up . Theres a few u tube vids of it being done.I,m guessing it wont be totally effective for my application ,but worth a try.

works great on all alloys....carbs especially, I think there is a thread on here about it with a link to some site that does it , tells you how to make up the gun etc. Just uses ordinary washing soda crystals.

Done a bit of research. From what I can see ,it isnt Washing Soda ,its Bicarbonate of soda. I looked in Tescos,they have Baking Soda ,but apparently it has got other additives,and also it is mega expensive . Can get the correct stuff for soda blasting on- line,but,to me it it is expensive just to experiment with.  Apparently asian cook shops sell it in larger quantities.We have such a shop in Braintree,so I'm gonna try there today.
  All this is a pain to sort out,as its really holding me up from my build. I keep going out to the w/shop and nibbling away at the rust on the axle ,but Im getting filthy dirty and cold to no avail,so its probably worth waiting to blast it.I should've had the thing blasted from the outset,but I was too tight to pay the wonga,now Im suffering!

Best place to buy large container of bicarb at a small price is a wholesale kind of place - we have 'Makro' in this area - I buy a big tub for household cleaning jobs!

Yeah,we went down to lidl ,but they were shut. The asian cook shop is only open Weds to Friday,so I'll have to wait!I think its worth persevering with ,as if it doesnt work on the axle I can at least clean my carb up with it!

Or bake something with it.

Theres always one........ ::)... ;)

and it`s always him  ;D ;D ;D ;D

I thought he was being sensible,for once

So did I.

Still cant find the soda locally,so have now bought some kiln dried sand.A mate reckons thats what he uses .Gonna give it a try over this w/end.Dont know if it will work in the low tech system I intend to use ,but worth experimenting!

Damn and blast!It was worth a try! (not) Compressor isnt powerful enough I reckon! Hey Ho,another load of time wasted! Will have to find and take it to a local blaster.P****d off!
                 
              Rod

Hi Rod
I know that feeling well,you just got to put it behind you and move on.When the next thing you try possibly works you will forget all about this moment,keep your chin up and all the best
Merv

Just spotted that you tried sand as a blast media . Just a wee warning thatyou should not use sand ( even though it's called sand blasting ) cause the sand breaks and gives off particles too small for a normal dust mask . And another reason that I can't remember just now

Merv........ ,thanks for commiserations.......
 Blair...........Point taken......,experiment didnt get as far as that!
 I ended up rubbing down the axle a bit more and taking a chance with painting.If the rust that is left causes probs later on ,I'll just have to deal with it in due course.Had to do something ,as it was holding up the build,and I was slowly losing interest.Having previously spent a couple of months rubbing down and prepping the frame,it was beginning to get boring!I hate the painting and 'prettying up' stage,would much rather be solving bracketry probs and the like!
      Rod

you should only use sand if you have a complete breathing apparatus. Sand breaks up, as stated previously, and the small particles get into your airways causing silicosis, and trust me you don`t want that.

I find it hard to believe soda can be used for removing rust or paint, unless you have a lot of air and use
a lot of soda. You can buy the armex soda, costs around 25quid a bag. I blast with aluminium oxide
before powdercoating, gives a nice etched surface and takes rust off. I have been going to try it for
blasting ali engine parts.


Something that works well is wet blasting, you stick an attachment on a pressure washer
and it sucks sand into the high pressure water stream. Sand is OK for wet blasting. Water and bare
steel sounds all wrong, so I didn't try the wet blast thing included with my pressure washer[bought in the 80's],
untill something like 2000, when I blasted my land rover wheels. I blasted the landy wheels and gave them a squirt
with thinned galvafroid and a coat of matt green 2pack, up till last year there wasn't any sign of the rust
[that had been pretty bad], they could do with redoing now.

Evening , found this ..  not quite what you were looking for ...  cleans up Ali ok by the look of it though ...

   http://www.aircooledtech.com/tools-on-the-cheap/soda_blaster/


  ..  Hagar  ..

got all them bits bar the soda, gonna try that on scabby front brake calipers tomorrow. once cut a hole in side of a wheelie bin, covered it with thick polythene taped round with a slit for my hand to hold a sand blasting gun which was inside [put a air connecter thru side of bin, short hose inside n to compressor on outside] and put a perspex lid on it, had some mesh about half way down [held by the bin narrowing n a couple of brackets.]..which i used for resting casing on. worked OK with not much mess but had to have kiln dried sand which i couldn't keep dry enough.. would work with soda i guess.[perhaps reuse it.]

Ressurecting this thread.........Ive now almost completely degreased the whole engine and box ,but the aly surface isnt coming up like new. Ive tried commercial strength alloy wheel cleaner ..no difference.Going to try a test piece with various chemicals next. Apparently hydrocloric acid (DILUTED of course ;D) may work. Will get some recomendations from the science department tomorrow!
  Rod

well just to add my tuppence worth RODeo . i bought a bag of the soda media from Millers soda blasting supplies and tried it on my make shift blasting chamber . i have used this chamber to blast a couple of things with alloy oxide and it works pretty well . my compressor has 14 cfm and works at 150 psi and the extractor works good enough to see what I'm doing . so i cleaned it out of all ally and put in the soda and tried it on a test piece ( a rocker cover ) and after 2 seconds i couldn't see anything at all . after some faffing around i manged to get it so i could see , but my initial test didn't show that good a result
so i taped up my carbs and put them in , after around an hour i took them back out and found that whilst it cleaned the dirt off the main bodies it didn't really clean up the carb tops or float bowls in fact the results was pretty crap . i also tried it on my petrol tank cap and didn't get any better result from that .
it may be that my gun has to large a bore in the tip on it and it ned to be more concentrated to the area as with the small bore as per the tube shown on aircooled tech site
i ended up putting back in the ally oxide turning down the pressure of the compressor and going over the float bowls and carb tops again and got to say they looked pretty good so that's how i plan on doing my engine as well

i cant see soda removing paint or rust , well not with my set up anyways , but going to get some small bore tube and give that a go next