Keep up the good work!

 

The pistons are now ceramic coated with TechLine Cerakote CBC1 coating - was fairly painless, though
getting it to spray through one of various guns was a challenge. One piston was either not aluminum oxide
blasted enough or had some oil still on it, and it had a small spot that bubbled, and is going to be re-coated.
Otherwise, they came out real well!


They had a slight little "lip" to the finish since they were masked then sprayed. Using a yellow scotchguard pad, the lip is
easily removed with very little rubbing (it isn't bonded to metal so it moves from the object).
Here is a pic with slight lip:



All cleaned up:

 

fap

 

I finally have something that might be considered "home made turbo" style!

I soda blasted (baking soda + water @ high pressure) my cyl head as I mentioned before, and now doing head assembly I wasn't satisfied that all the soda was out with hosing the head down over and over. So, boil me up 3 pots of water, and turn the bath tub to HOT, and till it up!




after doing this three times letting it air dry after each, I am satisfied that all of it is dissolved (soda dissolves, in time, in water).

Prior, if I hosed the head down/out, I would let it dry and see some white residue where the water ran out... and it bugged me to think there might be ---- in the head. So, taken care of!

 

for the engine i was going to build before i ran out of time, i took the head to a self car wash place and hammered it with degreaser and waterblaster alternately, worked a treat, then just a good spray of crc/wd40 to stop the corrosion happening, and you are away. nice hot tanking though :-)

 

Well I actually soda blasted the head already - it was just an effort to get the soda out. Hosing/parts cleaner bin didn't work well because the water was in and out of the head before it could actually dissolve the soda.

Soda blasting is SO good though, it was worth the pain.

 

i did read what you wrote. was just suggesting another alternative, got a link to something about doing that? i'm curious.

fred.

 

Fred the only thing I found was a head reconditioning shop's website that says "we use soda blasting exclusively when cleaning aluminum cylinder heads."

It just so happens my friends shop has an enclosed soda blasting cabinet - I spent an hour figuring out how it worked and then another 1 hr blasting. There's not much to it - the concept behind the soda is that as the baking soda hits the head at high velocity it blows apart, so it's actually a chemical reaction versus being a straight abrasive.

 

tat is omne very nice bmw/motor/build

 

thanks very much