I originally started using this for my aluminum motorcycle parts but when my boss saw a 3.2 intake he asked me to send out some pieces from the shop. We just got back two 67S sand cast aluminum cases. They aren't painted but they almost look that way. The vapor blast is a pressurized wet mixture of micro glass bead, water and soap. Done in a big tank. It polishes the metal vs leaving a rough finish like regular glass bead. It's also safe for internal engine areas. No residue. The guy I send the parts to is $60/hour and the exterior of the engine case took 2.5 hours. Intakes were 1 hour for the pair. My 40 year old motorcycle parts look like new. (Except for bigger scratches).

Those turned out really nice! Do you have to contend with the oil passage ways or do they squirt the media thru those too?

We asked him just to do the outside of the case because ours was just for cosmetics but on my motorcycle case I had him do inside and out. It leaves the inside looking like new without any residue. He also uses a sonic cleaner so all the passages are cleaned.

There are a couple people around the country but after checking them out I settled on this guy - http://noreasterblastworx.com
His name is also Mark and he's in New Hampshire. He's been very easy to work with. If you do decide to contact him, he often takes a day or two to return the message.

Looks like a good answer for our aluminum fan shrouds too - in order to not get a polished look to them, in addition to engine & transaxle cases, etc.


Tom
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Parts look great....I don't like the name! Not a vapor process

Water+compressed air+glass bead ≠ vapor

I didn't name it. Seems to be the name used in the motorcycle/industry that makes the device.

I wonder if my car would fit

Here's some of the drum brake parts I sent and one before photo.

I started researching this because the aluminum parts on my bike were heavily oxidized but the fins on the engine case and hubs made palishing very difficult. Traditional bead blasting didn't have the finish I wanted. The vapor blasting did. The Porsche aluminum turned out much brighter silver than the Italian motorcycle parts.

The 911 fan and the /4 fan shroud is magnesium, without a coating of some kind they will look like crap again in no time.

Hit it (mag parts) with some gibbs and you should be good to go right?

Gibbs is ok stuff but mag is still going to deteriorate.

Mark,
The intakes look great! What are you coating them with?
Dave

He gave me some spray. It's a Gibbs like product.

I just started working on my second motorcycle rebuild. This time, instead of sending out the parts for vapor blasting, I can do it “in house”.
First step is cleaning. The shop ultrasonic cleaner is big enough for a Porsche engine so my little 350 was easy.

It came out of the tank clean but ugly.

The vapor blast machine was just serviced so 5 minutes on each piece was enough to make it pretty again.

@bbrock - ready for your carbs

That's awesome! The before looks just like my carb bodies. Going to try to tear down and clean the second carb tomorrow. I need something to get my mind off the brake caliper fiasco

I'm in the aerospace precision cleaning business and we never ultrasonic aluminum. What you see on the surface of the aluminum are cavitation marks generated by small implosions that are super hot in excess of 300F on the aluminum when the ultrasonics are on. Excessive exposure to sonication can generate pits and even cracks on the surface of the aluminum. When cleaning aluminum and ultrasonic cleaning is desired, its best to only do small burst 15-20 seconds of sonication at a time but not to exceed more that a few minutes in total for the cleaning.

There is a gentleman on the international CBX Web site
In Arizona that does vapor blasting, if you are more local to
There... goes by the name noble hops I think..

Thank you for the education.

Thanks for sharing!

Jeff B

With Herr Mueller. The first time I heard the phrase vapor blasting, I had something very different in mind until I started googling.

Very interested in this process.

That looks Awesome!!!

It’s started out like this

That's phenomenal! Thanks for posting this Mark.

Yes, super info on getting parts cleaned up and looking great again.

Brent’s carbs. I had to go easy because I didn’t want to strip off the plating on the hardware and fittings. Still, it looks better than what we started with and I was happy I could help out Brent. A little payback for such an entertaining and enjoyable build thread.

*I don’t do this for hire and since I no longer work at the shop, I’m not able to sneak in other peoples parts. Sorry.
The good thing is that there are more and more people offering this surface.

Beautiful Moto Morini! @mepstein - please send a video of it running, and pics of the completed resto if you can . . .

Restoration on the Morini riders club. http://www.morini-riders-club.com/forum/vi...amp;hilit=Early

There are a lot more pics and details on my builders site - Antietam classic cycle Facebook.
After seeing my vapor blasted parts, my engine builder has been using it on a lot of his builds.

Can't tell you how grateful I am that you brought my carbs back to beautiful. I still have to stop and stare at them in admiration at least once a week.