Soda Blast WIN!

After a few days of waiting for various bits and pieces, the blasting cabinet arrived and I have set it up and made some headway. It seeks I was using too much pressure and too wide a nozzle. 40 PSI and a 4mm nozzle seems to work rather well, but the soda I bought was food grade so it loves to cake and doesn't flow as I'd like. It slows the process down but it works and the results will speak for themselves.

The blasting cabinet/case is only small but it's big enough for the jobs I intend to do. It includes a pick up hose, blasting gun, straight air connection hose, 4 nozzles, air filter, a few plastic covers for the lid and a fluorescent light.

While in use the visibility is pretty bad even with the light on but apparently this can be solved by using a vacuum cleaner to remove the dirty air. The cabinet does have a tendency to blow the dust out through any gaps but the vacuum cleaner should create enough suction to solve that issue too.

The before shots show a ratty and dirty engine case and the engine number. Really not a very good look for a restoration.

The after shows the other engine casing and the engine number plate part way through cleaning. Much better but still not perfect. I'll take the majority of the mess and old paint off on the first pass and then return to get any spots I've missed. The process is a lot more time consuming than I had anticipated but that's fine. I'm time rich and money poor.

I'll be doing the rest of the cases tomorrow and will show the finished items. Now I just need to decide whether to get rid of the casting seams. I think I probably will.

Soda Blast Failure

If you've read the last couple of posts you'll know about my trial with building a soda blaster, well it really is turning into a trial!

Yesterday I tied to use my DIY setup but the pipes in the hardware seemed to just constantly clog up so I'd strip down to see if I could find the issue but the soda would just fall back out the wrong way. I gave up.

Today I started with a fresh mind and thought about using a wider hose but the only thing I had available was hose pipe. I cut A 3 foot length and jammed a large funnel in one end as a make shift hopper. I drilled a 6mm hole about 2" away from the opposite end and jammed the nozzle from my compressor blower into it. This worked to a certain extent but the soda was coming through way too fast so I tried altering the funnels nozzle diameter to reduce the flow. It didn't really work. so back to square one with that. The hose has about a 12mm diameter which I think is far to wide and any soda that comes through just lacks the necessary force to clean the paint from the aluminium engine case.

Tomorrow with a fresh mind again I'm going to try reducing the hose nozzle size to see if that helps. I have ordered a proper blaster tool that fits onto the compressor hose and has a feed for the soda but it could be a few days before that gets delivered and I'M IMPATIENT.

I had a small amount of success with this machine and it did clean a small area but I used about 2kg of soda and it took a loooong time so not viable.

The bare aluminium is the blasted area so it's working but not as efficiently as required by a long shot. 

The bearing puller arrived and although cheap at £26, it looks like a decent enough piece of hardware for the jobs I'll need it for. Here is the link for the one I bought.

Each day brings new challenges and sometimes they kick your arse. Today my arse got kicked but tomorrow I'll get up and try again.

The Main Strip

Today I was feeling enthusiastic so I got the majority of the parts off the bike. I left the wheels and suspension in place for now. Hit a few minor hitches, main one being the completely tin worm infested fuel tank.

A brand new replacement is £350 so I need to find a much cheaper option. Once I've blasted it I'll know more about the condition and whether I could possibly repair it. The carb is quite a state too but could be saved if the choke can be removed, but it's stuck fast.

I have cleaned most of the parts up and got most of the gunk, old oil, muck and mud off them. They're all going through the blaster next week so they'll look even better again. 

I really wish Honda had made the tank out of the same steel they used to make the rear fender. I'm also wishing I had a decent workshop. Maybe a workbench or 2 would be handy.

The bike is now in it's final stages of strip down but I won't be taking the wheels and suspension off the frame until I'm ready to send it for powder coating. It had a good pressure wash earlier but is still quite dirty with a fair bit of built up crud in the nooks and crannies. When the frame is cleaned up I'm going to look into blocking up or bonding some of the nooks when the majority of the crap gathers just to make future cleaning easier.

On the positive side the rear shocks although a bit rough looking are in pretty good working order so I think I'll be keeping them and tidying them up. The bushes have expectedly perished and will need replacing and the wheel bearings are very loose but these things are easy fixes compared to putting the engine back together.

Project Specific Tools

Yesterday I started to make a soda blast chamber to clean up the ratty looking parts. I went to my local hardware store and got a large clear plastic toy/storage box and cut 2 hand holes in it to fix 2 elbow length rubber gloves.

Today the gloves came and I fitted the gloves using 2 plywood rings to keep the gloves in place and to stop any soda from the chamber from coming out. I will show some video of the chamber once it's finished and in use.

I also invested in a couple of workshop tools. First was the compressor

It's a 24 litre, 2.5hp, 9.5cf/m unit which will be more than adequate for my needs. Here is a link to the one I bought.

The next thing I needed was an internal bearing puller as there are a couple of blind bearings that will be almost impossible to remove without it. Link to the item Here.

After inspecting the original engine internals I found them to be too far gone to be of any use so a visit to eBay turned up an intact used engine bottom end with all the bits needed for my requirements. Cheap too at £41. 

Once the original engine cases are cleaned, painted and the new bearings and seals have been fitted, the internals from the donor engine will be transferred into the original cases. and the bottom end can be put back together.

It's a lot of waiting for tools and parts to arrive now. but I'll update as soon as I have more to share.

The Project Begins

After 25 years of riding small 2 stroke motorbikes I decided it was time to take on a small project. My son is now 16 and of legal age to ride a 50cc so I chose the first bike I ever owned and rode, a Honda MT50SG.

The bike is a 1987 model and is quite a mess so it's going to be a complete strip and rebuild from the ground up. The engine was taken apart by the 2nd to last owner and then left in a damp shed so most of the engine internals are rusty and pretty much useless so money will need to be spent on new/second hand parts and plenty of time cleaning parts that can be used again. with a full restore in mind I have bought a compressor and a big bucket of sodium bicarbonate so i can soda blast the engine parts before painting and rebuilding.

I'M NOT AN EXPERT! I am going to make mistakes but the best way to learn is by making those mistakes and I want you to share those mistakes with me so we can learn and teach together.

I am qualified as a mechanic, although once qualified I never put the qualification into much practice other than servicing and repairing my own bikes, so this is more than I've ever done in the past.

So now I've introduced the project, here are some pictures.

The bike is a rolling chassis with 2 boxes of engine parts.

As you can see the engine is in a really sorry state and the internals are a mess.

So that's where I'm up to on 17/02/2017. Next job will be inspecting the individual engine parts I have and determining whether they are salvageable or if they are trashed and buying replacements as needed. 

Soda blasting will commence as soon as the compressor is delivered and the system is set up. I'll post some video of the process and report on all the problems I encounter.