Glass Beading...

[S10xGN]

Hiya!

My son took his old Edelbrock Performer manifold to work with him the other day, and was glass-beading it during lunch. A co-worker told him never to do engine parts with glass beads, as the beads will work their way into the engine later and destroy it. What's your take on this? I've done pistons before and never had a problem with "bead destruction"... Should he continue?

TIA!

 

[John Larkin]

Bollocks! Someone doesn't know how to clean up their work.

 

[G-boz]

I heard the samething. a friend of mine blasted a manifold, cleaned it thoughly,even threw it in the dishwasher a couple of times and he said he still got media out of it.
I blasted mine,(just the outside)then had it painted,hopefully the paint will keep in any leftover media, if any??

 

[ghall]

I assure you that is BS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!One of my best friends works on lt-1's and lt-4's as a side bus.--I have probably used glass bead on 30-40 intakes and 50-75 sets of heads.If you use compressed air to blow out the left overs in small places------you will be fine.No failures at all out of all the stuff i have done for him.

Geoff

 

[87boosted6]

glass beading

ive heard of that. my auto teacher had a blasting cabinet in the shop and i did a bunch of stuff off of my car. he said to make sure its clean and you dont get media in your engine, throw it in the parts washer (which i did) and maybe go to a machine shop and pay like 20 bucks to have them hot wash it in one of there thingys. so, yeah it can happen, but it can also be avoided.

 

[GNVAIR]

The no no is to never do surfaces that are exposed to the oiling system (ex: inside the oil pan or valve covers, bottom of the intake, etc.) This is especially true with aluminum as the glass particles can penetrate the aluminum. When installed on the car, the hot oil can actually wash that stuff into the engine.
I did do my timing cover BUT I taped off the oil pump housing and did not do the back/inside.

 

[Pronto]

I have no direct experience with engine parts but I do use glass bead blasting at my work (dental technician). The beads are very fine and I assure you that you can rinse them and blow them dry and there will be beads left on the surface. After we bead blast or blast with 40 micron aluminum oxide we put the frameworks in a beaker of water in a ultrasonic bath. There is ALWAYS grit left in the beaker even though the framework was rinsed off first. I would never use one of those sparkplug cleaner things for that very reason. Unless you can run it through an ultrasound or high pressure washer I wouldn't be use glass beads for inside engine parts.

 

[S10xGN]

DOH! I guess that means those pistons I had 'beaded years ago shouldn't have lasted a mile let alone the 40k miles I drove it before selling? Anyways, thanks for your opinions! He just wanted to clean it up before offering it for sale...