I degreased '74 transaxle this weekend. It's been sitting for 10 years and had 36 years of crud built up on it. I used POR marine clean which worked pretty well but would like to try the home made soda blaster I saw on here to try to shine it up a bit. Two questions: does the soda blaster really work? And if it does, will it harm my trans case in any way?

You might want to google cleaning the tranny. Lots of talk, lots of concern with blasting without a total dissembly of the tranny. Can you say blow grit in the box?

if the cleaners are acidic, I'd not use them, you can coorde teh case badly, some time the compound left form cleaners can cuase deep corrosion after the fact when they get into cracks and crevices. make sure any solutions you use on the case arre magnesium safe. some automotive cleaners are not safe, dont know about marine clean, just make sure it is ok on Mg.

I painted my case after clean up to prefvent corrrosion, 15 years later, still looks good, simple rattle can gloss grey did the trick.

Thanks for the advise. Yeah, I am a little concerned about the magnesium as well. I was going to use a silver POR 15 to paint the case with. Maybe I will just do that.

There are several of these threads but this one has some links I included in my reply.
I'd stick to mineral spirits or Simple Green and elbow grease. As for the anti-corrosion prep check out those links.

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...amp;hl=coatings

Good luck