Specialty cleaning

Soda Blasting

Soda blasting is very similar to using glass beads, but instead, a specially made “baking soda” is used. This soda is coarser than that used at home and does a very good job cleaning parts without hurting the underlying metal in any way. Another advantage to using soda is that it easily dissolves in water so that a quick rinse is all that is needed and you don’t have to worry about leftover cleaning material hurting your newly machined parts.  

Glass Bead Blasting

Cleaning engine parts with a glass bead cabinet has been done for many years in many industries. It is really the best way to clean aluminum cylinder heads even though the process of making sure that all of the glass bead particles are removed from the parts is VERY time-consuming. This process also works well for many small parts such as engine valves. 

 

Hot Tank

Hot tanking is the traditional way to clean dirty cast iron engine blocks, heads etc. The hot tank is a big metal tank containing a caustic hot water solution. The parts are submerged in the solution and allowed to soak for many hours with the solution slowly circulating around them. This is sometimes referred to “vatting” or “boiling” the block, because it is being soaked in a large “vat” of almost boiling liquid. A hot tank does a good job of cleaning engine parts but does not always remove all of the rust and old paint.  Aluminum parts cannot be cleaned in a hot tank as they will dissolve.