Quick-N-Easy soda blaster.

I'm sure most have seen this done,or have done it themselves but I'll share anyway. The other day I rebuilt the carb on my old ford.The carb was varnished up and no matter what I did,or soaked,sprayed... it just wouldn't clean up. So I grabbed a few feet of clear acrylic hose,a box of baking soda,and a blow gun. Looks as good as new.....maybe better ! To do it take and cut a slit in a length of hose big enough to get the tube of your blow gun in there, slip the blow gun tube in there about an inch,then tape the blow gun to the tube.Cut a 45 in the other end of the hose,tape a welding rod or ??? to it so it doesn't curl, drop it in the baking soda and go to town ! It will blow you mind how quick it gets the job done !

Pics would be great

Are you talking about setting up a siphon feed with the air nozzle of your air compressor?
What diameter hose are you using for the feed hose from the baking soda? How much water per pound of soda (I assume this involves a water mix)?
How do you keep the baking soda from settling out and just feeding it all through right at the beginning? (I understand that the angled cut on the feed hose is designed to prevent clogs.)

Well pictures will have to wait untill I get back to the shop. I can post a link though ! http://www.aircooledtech.com/tools-on-the-cheap/soda_blaster/ Cleaned inside,and out as good as possible on my carb !

Thanks, that's what I was picturing in my old brain

For some reason I had assumed this was a water-soda mix. I guess because when I worked in a plating shop back in the late 70's & early 80's they had a small water blaster that I am assuming used a soda mix. (I never ran it - it was in another department. I just ran the aluminum-oxide & the glass bead blasters. So I don't recall how they kept the blasting material from settling out in the water.)

I wonder how one of those sandblast guns would work ? You know, the ones where your compressed air goes in one fitting and there is a suction hose that normally goes into the sand . Maybe you could substitute soda for the sand.

Don

donsrods said:

I wonder how one of those sandblast guns would work ? You know, the ones where your compressed air goes in one fitting and there is a suction hose that normally goes into the sand . Maybe you could substitute soda for the sand.

Don

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I had the same thought Don. Or even just the open hopper style sandblaster.
I've got one of those guns around here some where. I may have to try it.
Torchie.

Good Ol' HF has this for 20 bucks.

As I see it, the biggest problem would be keeping the baking soda dry so it wouldn't clump up in the gun. I keep it around for my cat's litter boxes and it gets clumpy real fast from humidity. Even though I have a drier on my air compressor, some moisture still comes through, so it might clog up things.

But I am going to try that HF gun, I have some carbs to rebuild and it looks like soda cleans them up great.

Don

Sorry for the lack of pictures guys, but I will try to get home early enough after work to get a shot of my carb so ya'll can see just how well it really cleans !

What a great idea!
I have a couple edelbrocks going on my 454 that need rebuild and they are dirty on outside too.Now I know how to clean them up nice.
Thanks for the tip.

I've been using my regular sand blasting gun with a piece of 1/2" hose attached and just stuck down in a bucket of sand for rough parts cleaning. Florida is loaded with silica sand...heheh! I did pick up a slightly different device from HF the other day for about 20 bucks too. Instead of being gravity fed like the one shown above, this one looks much like a siphon paint gun. I'll take a pic of it later. I haven't had the opportunity to give it a test drive yet.

I do it this way because its stuff I have laying around at any given time,and the nearest HF is in Colorado ! What I can say for sure is it's a SUPER fast way to clean a carb up,and I don't think you could hurt the carb body if you tried !

I take it back

Tractor supply is where I picked this up...less than $20

I keep thinking about the moisture problem with dry soda, and why this wouldn't work with a water mix. You would of course need a way to keep the solution stirred up a bit, to keep the soda from settling out. I'm thinking that if just a bit was fed back into the bottom of the blasting cabinet it would keep the solution mixed. Or would baking soda actually dissolve in water, and not be abrasive any more?

The water blaster I mentioned earlier - I'm thinking now about where it was in the plating shop, and I recall that it was in that area where they also did silver & gold plating. (This was all repair work - to replate some small cylinder bores back up to specs.) So it would make sense to use a mild abrasive like soda to blast a soft metal like silver or gold.

Wonder how that would do to clean a aluminum intake? If it did like it did on that carb, it should work pretty good.

I know they use it to blast paint off of bodies, it's supposed to be better than sandblasting because it doesn't generate as much heat. I know it has to be kept dry, mixed with water I doubt it would have any abrasive qualities.

As far as the water/soda mix goes.....The only incite I can give is that is once I had my carb clean I rinsed it all in warm water and I can tell that at least in that mixture it would have almost no if any abrasive properties. And my way around moisture in the soda is get the mid sized boxes and use up what I open.

Bamamav said:

Wonder how that would do to clean a aluminum intake? If it did like it did on that carb, it should work pretty good.

I know they use it to blast paint off of bodies, it's supposed to be better than sandblasting because it doesn't generate as much heat. I know it has to be kept dry, mixed with water I doubt it would have any abrasive qualities.

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Although I don't have pictures I did do a weiand SBC intake a couple years ago that was about as bad as it could be,varnish,and gunk buildup from a leaky carb,as well as caked in oil,and grease from unknown years of neglect.
I sprayed it with purple power which is my favorite degreaser for the money, then used the pressure washer at the carwash to get the buildup off...took it home let it dry completely then I blasted it with the above mentioned method ! Looked like new ! And if it's a carb that has the coating still on it this wont take it off ! It only seems to take of the accumulated crap from fuel,oil,and grease.It took 3 of the big boxes of soda just so you have an idea,but YMMV

itsmecord said:

As far as the water/soda mix goes.....The only insight I can give is that is once I had my carb clean I rinsed it all in warm water and I can tell that at least in that mixture it would have almost no if any abrasive properties. And my way around moisture in the soda is get the mid sized boxes and use up what I open.

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OK. The material they used in the plating shop must have been something else. It was white, and sort of chalky, so I thought it might have been soda. (I actually have the blasting cabinet that system used - it was scrapped when the shop burned around 81 or so. I have it stored at my folks' place in Oklahoma, so I can't check for the residue in it now. It was a simple siphon feed system with the blasting material-water mix going out at the bottom of the funnel which was below the rack inside the box. I was going to use it w/ a glass-bead blaster I had, but it was too small to be useful.)