Seeking advice regarding soda blasting my engine

[sherwin]

I realize I'm doing this backwards and would have been better off soda blasting my engine before rebuilding it, however things just did not work out that way.

I have the harbor freight 40lb soda blaster and will be taking it to a friends house to use his compressor. I'm using various plugs and such to block off every orifice so as not to get soda into the engine. I think I have got things covered but I'm just looking for pointers or advice from anyone who has done it before. If anyone has any comments please post them.

Thank you,
Sherwin

 

[visimpact]

I did mine with a small harbor freight handheld sand blaster. I bought a huge bag of baking soda at harbor freight as well. I went thru the whole bag. Put a clean tarp under the bike to collect the soda and you can reuse it(after sifting it clean).
I plugged up everything with shop towels and then a lot of duct tape. It gets in everything so you really have to do a good job sealing things up. The reason I used the hand held little spot blaster was to control where the soda was being shot and keep it away from areas it could sneak thru even with them taped up. Anyway, if you are doing it to clean up your engine it does a ok job. If you are doing it because your side cases look bad it wont even touch them. At least mine didnt. It really just cuts thru grease and grime and if theres paint it does get that off its worn down quite a bit. There were a few spots of paint that it couldnt get off. If I just got done rebuilding mine Im not sure I would have blasted it but I can say my bike runs perfectly after blasting. Just not sure I would take any chances on a rebuilt one. From what Ive read any tiny little bit of soda that may sneak in somewhere should melt with heat and should not cause issue.

 

[Dakota_Lew]

Yea I just sealed all the ports really well, I used the 15 pound soda blaster from harbor freight it worked really well just plan on using more soda then you think you would. I regretted not getting the 40 pound considering how many times I reloaded the bloody thing. The first pass takes off the majority of grim, the second pass really brings out the metal, I was shocked how well it worked! I went threw about a bag and a half and then the rest on some odds and ends, so I used a total of two bags. It works really well just be prepared for the mess becuase Visimpact is right... it gets every where. I also wore my full face respirator with basic particle filters in it, it kept it out of my lungs and face. Goggles are key though if you don't have a full face respirator. Just be prepared to look like Casper when your done. I jumped on the other bike when i was done and blew myself off on the highway, probably looked a little funny with soda coming off me in clumps... haha.

Only functional advice is make sure you have a big enough air compressor, I have a super heavy duty one for working on tractor and spray rigs, and I ran it at 100 psi pretty much the entire time. I hear guys trying to get away with a 10 or 20 gallon one and constantly waiting for it to get the PSI back up. I am sure you could run the PSI at around 50 and do the same thing just would take longer. Also its an all day project depending on how good of job you want to do so be prepared for that, getting in between the fins on the back next to the oil delivery pipe will take some time.