Mediablasing an engine?

Thank you Fox.

The whole blasting process took me about one hour, though i used at least half an hour cleaning the bottom case (as i mentioned earlier i didn't get my gear shaft out) The glass really gets in anywhere.
Brake cleaner and compressed air are my new best friends
I guess blasting the cases, cylinders and head took aprox 30 min, and this was my first time.

About color scheme I was looking to go for gold on black, but since there is no one who does "gold" platting, or brass platting, the only alternative was 24k gold!!! I had to tell the guy who told me this that i intend to drive the bike, not having at as an ornament in the living room

Anyway, the engine gets classic black 800 degrees Celsius Matt paint, and the cover all get polished. about the rest i have to come up with something clever, it's going to be black, but the details... i have seen this chrome paint somethimes, never tried it.. maybe chrome pinstriping.. ??

I got this thread, i'll be posting stuff on there everytime i do something new
http://www.dotheton.com/forum/index.php?topic=33052.msg362055#msg362055

Off to work, have a great day!

Not to hijack the thread or anything, but I am curious if anyone has media blasted their motors without taking it apart? I was thinking I wanted to go through mine with a soda blaster and I do not want to take it all apart and rebuild motor. Can this be done without getting too much crap inside the motor?

sbaugz, there are no shortcuts, you must break it down.

sbaugz: I took mine apart but couldn't get the last gear barrel out due to crappy bolts, so i taped all openings shut, i spent about two hour doing this, hoping no glass would get inside to the barrel. BUT, although no tape were ripped (heavy duty, thick tape) the engine was almost filled with glass. and it took me about two hours to clean all out properly.

I would NEVER try to blast a complete engine and start it up, "hoping" it would be OK.

Take the thing apart, it's not that big of a job.

sbaugz said:

Not to hijack the thread or anything, but I am curious if anyone has media blasted their motors without taking it apart? I was thinking I wanted to go through mine with a soda blaster and I do not want to take it all apart and rebuild motor. Can this be done without getting too much crap inside the motor?

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To be honest, I'd trust what Swan and Vain said, but this guy that I follow looks like he blasted without breaking down. Looks good, but I don't know details beyond what's in the thread. You could ask him. But again, trust Swan and Vain. They know their stuff.
http://www.dotheton.com/forum/index.php?topic=33298.msg361647#msg361647

vain said:

Anyway, the engine gets classic black 800 degrees Celsius Matt paint, and the cover all get polished. about the rest i have to come up with something clever, it's going to be black, but the details... i have seen this chrome paint somethimes, never tried it.. maybe chrome pinstriping.. ??

I got this thread, i'll be posting stuff on there everytime i do something new
http://www.dotheton.com/forum/index.php?topic=33052.msg362055#msg362055

Off to work, have a great day!

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I gotcha. That's a lot shorter than I'd expected. I keep flipping back and forth between wanting to blast it and thinking it's gonna be excessive. The best way I suppose is to clean it as good as I can, which will happent his weekend. Simple Green and I are about to become good friends. I'll update as I go.

Haha! Can't believe the guys wanted to put precious metals on a Cafe. He must not know that were just gonna angle grind it off a couple months later? Oh, and it sounds like we're gonna have a pretty similar color scheme. Not trying to go with anything crazy. Just don't want raw metal all over mine. I think I'm gonna go with brushed aluminum instead of polished though.

Yeah the guy must be some kind of millionaire just to think about it

I love green, i made my last build in green flake and black, so i got to do something different this time.

Do you have a thread on your build, I'd like to follow the progress

vain said:

Yeah the guy must be some kind of millionaire just to think about it

I love green, i made my last build in green flake and black, so i got to do something different this time.

Do you have a thread on your build, I'd like to follow the progress

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I gotcha. There's a couple guys on here that are pretty handy with photoshop. Maybe post a thread up to see if they could do a mock up of some color schemes for you.

I sure do. It's the underlined words in my sig. Post something up(You can tell me how beautiful my rust is) so you get notifications, would love to have you onboard!

Sorry for straying from the topic by the way.

Howdy gents,
Just wanted to update really quick.
I didn't have time to breakdown my engine this weekend, but I'm blocking off this coming weekend to tackle that project. I'll post my process and outcome with pictures soon as I'm finished. Keep an eye out.

MY eyes are wide open Fox

Just to close out the thread,

I didn't go with blasting. Went with hand sanding(80,120,220,400, 600) and a few Dremel polishing bits instead. Works well, and from what I can tell, you get the same finish as if you blasted it.

Thanks for all the input. Much appreciated. Hope this helps someone in the future.

Fox, how long did it take you to go the hand sanding route?

I'd say 30 minutes to an hour, depending of the piece. Rims of course take longer, as do engine parts with lots of contours. You can check my thread for what the finished product looks like.