81 GS550T Full Rebuild...In Ohio

[cowboyup3371]

That was actually the plan Steve but it was too late to call and set a date. I'll contact you tomorrow.

[Steve]

'Most any evening, ... after 5.

.

[Dogma]

Does someone have some good directions on making your own since the stuff I saw on YouTube looked suspicious last night?

I think this was probably the directions I worked from. I'm sure I had to make a few adjustments to get it going well with the flow rate I had available. Maybe that's the difference between my result and Tom's. He probably has a real compressor.

It goes through the $0.50 boxes from Dollar General pretty quickly. I'd get a few bucks worth to do a set of carbs. Keep it dry, of course.

[cowboyup3371]

Thank you Dale, I'll try it out.

[Sci85]

I've done the homemade blaster too and it didn't work so well. I think you need a pretty hefty compressor. And be prepared to clean up a lot of soda if you don't have a cabinet.

You asked if using the dremel with a wire wheel works? It works great. Will leave those carbs nice and shiny. I'm at work now but will post up some before and after pics when I get home tonight for ya.

[Steve]

You asked if using the dremel with a wire wheel works? It works great. Will leave those carbs nice and shiny.

That is actually one of the problems with using a Dremel and a wire wheel.

There is a big difference between CLEAN carbs and SHINY carbs.

I will take the natural, matte finish any day over the shiny wire-wheeled look.

.

[Sci85]

True Steve, it does depend on what one prefers. I like shiny and clean myself but nothing wrong with matte. However, if I'm gonna paint the body, I want all the old crud off and this is the quick and easy way I found without a blasting apparatus (which, IMO, leaves one of the best finishes...someday I will have one).

Here's what you can expect...

[cowboyup3371]

Cleaned up the replacement tach drive from Tkent02:



I'll stop by Lowes in the AM to get what I'll need to try soda blasting.

[pete]

That looks a little cleaner Scott, keen to see your soda blasting setup... may have to try that myself one day.

[cowboyup3371]

Thanks Pete; After putting in 7 hours at work today working on our phone scripts, I picked up the hose from Lowes and two 5-lb bags of baking soda from Walmart. I'm going to try getting over to the garage tomorrow and give it a shot.

[cowboyup3371]

Well, it's done; I'm not extremely impressed with the job as I'll have to take a pick and scrape off some areas the blasting wouldn't remove. But it's a LOT better than it was and so I'll try it again when I need I guess. I learned a few things though:

First, there are alot of cautions everywhere about keeping your soda dry during the process. So, I took one suggestion and used a saltine cracker in the bag - BAD MOVE The cracker broke up on me and blocked the line several times. I think I'll want to find a different method of keeping it dry next time though as I got streaks when I used the second bag without using the crackers.

Second, in conjunction with the above, I think I need a larger hose next time. The site Dogma linked to said to use 7/16 diameter clear vinyl hose but didn't say if that was ID or OD. When i went to Lowes, I didn't find any 7/16 so picked up 1/2 OD x 3/8 ID instead. It did the job but I think I should have used something bigger to reduce the likelihood of blockage. Clearing the blockages wasn't difficult but time consuming.

Third, even being outside and wearing a mask, that stuff went everywhere and gave me the taste of soda in my mask. I think I need to change the filters but it was a good thing I wore that mask. I'll also need to buy a shield for next time and probably some kind of oversuit.

Two five pound bags worked out well but they are hard to find - I grabbed the last two in the laundry aisle in Walmart and only saw 1-lb boxes in the baking aisle. You do have to continuously move the hose and reset it as the soda will disappear from the end fairly quickly. The piece of hard plastic hose was taped against the vinyl to ensure it didn't move around and it worked well. Air pressure was up around 80 psi but the compressor continuously ran (I used my friend's too which is a lot bigger than my itty bitty thing).

I think that about covers it. Here are some pictures for you - I took more of the carbs but figured I'd only post these.

My gun setup:



Soda:



Outdoor blasting booth:



Carbs:

[pete]

Good stuff Scott, they look pretty good to me!

I have heard of people ending up white after soda blasting...

[Dogma]

Looks pretty good, apart from stubborn corners where air couldn't carry the soda in to do the job. Did you do the anodized pieces too? Soda blasting brightened mine up quite a bit.

[cowboyup3371]

Good stuff Scott, they look pretty good to me!

I have heard of people ending up white after soda blasting...

Yea, I joked with my friend's wife that I had a new white t-shirt on as my arms were completely white and my black t-shirt was about that way.

[cowboyup3371]

I installed the tach drive into the valve cover and ground off the powder coat with my Dremel from the swingarm shock studs. My younger daughter tried to scrape out the old paint from the carbs that the soda blasting didn't get. I'll have to go over them again but I think I'll have the carbs together by tomorrow night.

No pictures today as I took them at night in a poorly lit garage and didn't turn out well. I'll do new ones tomorrow.