On A side note, I bought a used El Cheapo Cummins tool Sand blast cabinet for $100
I wanted to do Soda blasting with it, as soda washes away with water hence no worries about left over sand or glass beads in my engine. ( the new engine already came with clean internal parts, so this was for cleaning the parts from my original 3.2L)
I spent a few hours cleaning every grain of sand out of the cabinet it that I could, hooked up a little vacuum to it for dust control, dumped in 40 lbs of soda, and began.
BLAH! Siphon type media nozzles don't get Soda up to the needed speeds to be effective.
I spent a full minute on this piece of sheet metal, for a spot smaller than my thumb, and the soda wasn't even touching the rust.
SO I commence with attempting different nozzle diameters. The soda guys use really small nozzles) I mess with probably a dozen different combinations of diameters and none had significant improvement. Further investigations show that soda blasting uses a presurized media tank to accelerate the soda under high pressure, and really increase it's speed.
I gave up, dumped out the soda, and bought 40 lbs of glass beads. Works like a charm!!!
So far I have only done the sheetmetal. I'm thinking of finding a used dishwasher, and making it be my "Hot tank" because I still can't bring myself to clean anything more than valve covers and timing chain covers with glass beads.
Really a better (and cheaper) investment was the used Harbor Freight "40" gallon parts washer. Add 2 gallons of Purple Power water based cleaner, and dilute with 2 gallons water has done a very good job of cleaning off all traces of grease and grime.
Do ya see the dust? my little "free" vacuum was going a good job of keeping negative pressure in the cabinet up to the point where it died an overheated death. The resulting mess is the last 5 minutes of blasting I did with no vaccum system. Cheap media cabinets LEAK! I did have enough forethought to wheel the half completed engine into a closed door room, and cover it with a sheet, so the dust could not find it's way into it.
