Media blasting a 13b rotor
 

Hi guys,

Anyone have any experience with media blasting a 13b-rew rotor before? I have read a few threads and most people said media blasting a rotor will cause it damage and probably mess with clearance. If I'm not mistaken mannykiller media blasted his rotors without any issue. So can anyone chime in about this? Any personal experience?

I've been looking at getting my rotors for my rebuild soda blasted since cleaning off the carbon is a pain in the ass. Everything I've seen about soda blasting seems to indicate that its not "strong" enough to damage a rotor nor mess-up clearance. Supposedly you can soda blast a piston and it should be perfectly good, not too sure on how true this is.

Moe Greene

only with something soft like soda, but why go through all the trouble unless you have the blaster already set up for that media? cleaning the rotors by hand takes no more than 1-2 hours per rotor.

technically you could even use a wire wheel if you don't roll the wheel over any sharp edges, but this also strips the zinc plating off which protects the rotors from rust. i brass plate the rotors afterwards in the event the plating is damaged and needs to come off anyways.

I have a lot of carbon build-up on one of my rotors and can't seem to get it off. What method should I be using? I'm using a degreaser and gasoline to remove the carbon build-up. I'm getting lots of parts soda blasted so I thought I may as well get the rotors blasted alongside.

you can soda blast if you are careful, also must clean the parts thoroughly afterwards to get it out of the oil vanes. reason i never media blast rotors is because it is nearly impossible to clean out the oil vanes.

you could soak them in carburetor cleaner and scrub them with a brass brush periodically once the outer layer of carbon softens if you want to retain the zinc coating.

whatever method you choose is here, it's up to you to choose which one you want to go with.

steam clean.

Thanks I'm going to try a steam cleaner first. If that doesn't work ill try the carburetor method.

Ill try that, do you steam clean? If you do what type of unit do you use?

I don't, I never have. But, it's the same concept as running water injection or using the water method at idle. You'd want something relatively high powered.

Couple thread on it, with plenty of methods recommended.
https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generati...-irons-873991/
https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generati...rotors-362608/
https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generati...clean-1062987/

i tried steam cleaning outside the engine, all it produced was oxidization. won't get heavy carbon off.

I don't recommend any blasting of engine parts. Not only can you damage them, but you may not be able to get all the blasting media out. For rotors I use Zep industrial strength degreaser. Put it in a bucket full strength and let the rotor soak overnight. Takes everything off. Just don't use it on aluminum and always replace the bearings afterwards.

i used zep too, but for small jobs i hate being stuck with a toxic pool of sludge to try and dispose of.

C02 blast.

holy **** people, it's not rocket science. you get a brush and you move your arm side to side, placing the rotor under the brush at times can be beneficial.

Thats too hard.

get your mom over here and i'll show her something hard. :nod:

Bwahahahhhhh

Leave my mom out of this, and ill leave this out of your mom!

Wow, its like people have never cleaned carbon off anything before!!? Seriously, get a small wire brush, some thinners in a glass jar (or whatever your poison) and just get scrubbing. A couple of hours of scrubbing per rotor and you'll be done. Wear gloves if you're a bit too precious.

Blasting rotors with media or grit is totally overkill and may dimensionally alter the rotors for the worse, by removing surface material, affecting clearances smaller than you are aware of. Not to mention the residual grit or media will get in crevices you can't access, and then find its way via the oil into bearings and oil galleries and cause abradable damage over time.

I guess the age of these fancy self cleaning ovens and stuff have taken their toll.

duct tape the shit out of the sides of the rotors, sand blast the combustion chambers, clean all apex, side, corner grooves by hand.

The toughest grit isn't going to mess with the iron/steel that the rotor is made of.

If it was an aluminum piston, then yea stay away from serious media, but walnut shells would work in this application.

This would be overkill, but dry ice blasting would work.

I've tried blasting irons. Big fail. Regardless of how hard you try and think you have it all cleaned out, it will show up in the oil pan.

Yeha, they use dry ice to remove rust from dies without damaging the surface, so should work.

media blast with BAKING SODA.

then let it soak in water for a couple hours and spray it off really well with water then dry it.

this worked really well for it. and the baking soda isn't quite abrasive enough to remove the zinc coating, so one of my rotors actually ended up looking NEW. (the other rotor I got came from a different source, and it was slightly corroded past the factory zinc coating, so it didn't turn out quite as well, but still very nice).

The carburetor cleaner worked well; took about a full hour to clean one rotor.

Im going to pick up some Zep and see how that works compared to carburetor cleaner. Just wondering do you replace bearings? Mine are not too bad, but would rather get them replaced.

i dont know why so many people are intent on shipping delicate parts, i just got an engine that got banged up in shipping. shippers like to throw boxes, it aint their stuff...

anyone with a press and some generic bearing dies can press it in.

and i mean no offense to IRP in saying some work is just safer to have local shops do. seen wayy too many shipping damaged parts in my years doing this.

if you really wanna ship it, make a wooden box for it and pad the rotor inside that box, then pad that box and stuff it in the cardboard shipping box. if it can't pass a 5 foot drop test, it's not likely to make it through half a dozen shipping facilities unscathed.