Scalliwag

When you pull a motor apart and the rotor housings have a lot of funky crapola in the water passage, what are some of the most effective things you have tried? We are looking for cost and time efficient.
Also anything you may have tried that turned out to be a bad idea! Like muratic acid, etc.?

Moxeys93RX7

Just a thought but have you tried a parts washer? either hot water or chemical? i had my end plates bead blasted an it cleaned them up real nice. i just don't know if i need to recoat them with somehting so the passages don't rust before i out the motor back togehter. if you are oging to use glass bead (not sand) use a fine grit

Scalliwag

I've bead blasted and used my parts washer with standard degreaser solutions. The best success I have had was with a very light acid mixture and then dropping them into a butyl based soap solution to neutralize the acid. That was the least amount of actual work and about the same amount of time as blasting.
I hate blasting because unless you use round glass bead at a moderate pressure (as opposed to angular glass at a higher pressure) you risk screwing up a housing if you don't mask off the machined surfaces first.
The masking is not fun because you have to cut holes through the masking at each passage so it is a little time consuming. If I was going to go that route on a regular basis I would cut me some 1/4" plexiglass that attached to the sides of the housings via 4 1/2" stove bolts with wingnuts and washers. The only holes in the plexglass would be only where the water passages are and the bolt passages used for the stove bolts.
That way you could use angular at a higher pressure without risking other surfaces.
Another idea I pondered was to take something like a pipe cleaner on steroids with a 1/4" shaft and really strong bristles. Then getting a cheapass router table with a router. The "pipe cleaner" would have to come up at least 3-1/2" above the table surface in order to go all the way through the housing. While one school of thought may be to put the "pipe cleaner" on a heavy Dremel tool or one of those rotary drywall cutters (those are really badass BTW and can be picked for $30 from Harbor Freight. They are like a Dremel tool with a really fugged up attitude!) they would be pretty hard too handle considering you are cranking out 10,000 RPM and the surface area is 3-1/4" accross. Your wrist would be crying "uncle" pretty quickly.
Another thing the router table could be used for (besides routing ****) is if you wanted to do some grinding modifications on the passages. If you could find a straight rotary that was long enough it would work perfect. The table would keep the bit at a perfect 90 degree angle so the passages would look great.

But I still hope someone out there knows a more quick and painless way of getting the scale off. Surely there is a chemical someone has used that has had really good results. There are some expensive aluminum cleaners out there that can do it, but how about someting cheap?

Moxeys93RX7

i just used a few layers of duct tape and spent a few hours laying it over the important surfaces then vutting out all the holes. it took a long time but i think it gives you the best results. btw do you have a copy of the thomas registry? it is great for lookinging up specialty (machine, blastingm chrome, etc) all over the country

Scalliwag

I need to get a copy of that (Thomas Registry). There is a router bit made for trimming veneer and formica. It is a cutter with a bearing on the bottom of it. The bearing is the same size as the cutter. The bearing rides against the pattern you are cutting. If you bolt a piece of plexiglass to a housing and drill holes over the water passages you could use this cutter to make a opening the same size and shape of the passage. I know that is hard to follow. I will probably do it and post pictures. I have a habit of doing that

Moxeys93RX7

i know what you mean. my dad is a carpenter. are you talking making a patern and opening all the passages up to the size of the opening at the surface? i was woking on doing that but there are alot of placed where there just isn't ebough material to do that. there are very few passages that are solid enough to "port"

Scalliwag

Yep, so to opening is the same at the surface. I have a 1/4" bit so it is tiny enough to make the tight corners.
Some of the passages you could not do more than clean off the casting ridge. Others have like one or two sides that could be dogged out a bit. Next time you look at one you will be able to tell what I mean. You are not neccesarily talking about opening the port at all sides. Stay away from everything except the casting ridge on the ones where the exhaust runs next to.
I will do one and make some pictures. Did you see the thread on getting out roll pins to remove the exhaust ports without grinding? There are some cool pics on that.

TYSON

Have you tried a different blast media? At work we have plastic shot in the blast machine because sand, steel or anything hard is a no no in gearboxes. I've seen soda blast media on Dream Car Garage, they can take the paint off a pop can without denting the can. When I worked for Ford they had a blast machine that used dry ice pellets. They used it for cleaning casting moulds. Very gentle and no mess.

Scalliwag

That sounds pretty interesting. I made a plexiglass shield this morning a took pictures. I am about to pull them off the camera and give the details and a couple of things I will do differently the next time.

Scalliwag

Well I went out in the garage and started looking over my project material. I found a piece of thin plexiglass like the hardware stores sell for using in windows.
While I was looking for the cutter I talked about in the earlier post I ran across something I thought would work better. It is a 1/4" drill bit/cutter that is made to make plunge cuts into sheetrock to open holes for electric outlets, etc. I picked it up for that purpose at one time at a local hardware store called "Sutherland's". I have seen them other places though.
I decided to put it in my drywall rotary cutter. Since this bit will drill the access hole in the plexiglass and open it at the same time it was ideal.
The only bolts I had on hand (or actually the first ones I found that were long enough) are much longer than you would want to use.
Since the water passages can be scraped a little bit without worry, I figured the speed of doing it this way outweighed trying to leave the passages in an untouched condition when finished.

One mistake I made early on was not rechecking the bolt tension often and letting the plexiglass shift a couple of times. Once this is finished to the state where the pictures are at you should mark the corners where the cutter was a little too fat for and hand file with a fine cut file. A small assorted hand file set would come in handy for the touchup work. I did not bother doing that since the Cowboy game is on. I figure that I would let you guys kind of figure out what I am talking about.
The one "leg" to is thin and shoots off I would not cut that way again. It is a little too easy to break. This should work pretty well if you really want to pound the **** out of it with the abrasive.

setzep

Intresting stuff. You know Scalliwag instead of fixing up old wore out housings you should just make new ones By the time you clean out the water passages, grind/cut out the old apex surface, re apply new surface and machine it out you could have just made a new housing

Scalliwag

Haha! I wish making news ones were that easy! The actual process once you are setup and materials is not really bad. The cost of getting housings cast or milling from billet stock would be pretty ugly. At least with this process the cost at some point has potential.
I did notice the "tongue in cheek" way you said it. Just in case someone does not pick up on it I would rather explain it early on.

setzep

Just set up a foundary in your garage. Can't be thaaaaat expensive

Scalliwag

Okay. I will go knock one out real quick and post the pics on how I did it!

Moxeys93RX7

instead of cutting out all the water passages couldn't u just make one to cover the rotor surface? that way it leaves the o-ring grove open so u can clean all the old o-ring out also? it would be alot easier as you wouldn't have to cut each passage out, just cut an oval basically

Moxeys93RX7

would you consider sellling plexiglass templates in case someone sle wanted to do the same thing?

Scalliwag

I am not sure I would sell enough to make up for setting up a better system of making them. I guess anything is possible though.

Scalliwag

That may be okay on a side plate, but on aluminum sometimes the aluminum comes of easier than the scale. So if you leave any of the machine surface exposed where the o-rings seal there is a possibility of damaging the surface. On the pre-1986 housings the seals are on the rotor housing and 1986 up they are on the side plate. I have two chisels that I ground, one for the inner and one for the outer seal. This is because the width and the depth are different on the seal channels.

I spray WD40 on the channel and run the correct chisel in the correct channel and clean it off with compressed air. I can clean a channel in less than a minute.
I can take pics of my chisels to give you an idea of what I am talking about if you want.
This process is so easy and almost no risk of screwing up anything. I say almost because some people could fugg up an anvil! I had used wire brushes and a few other ideas I can't even remember anymore. Once I tried the chisel idea I was sold. It is best to find a chisel with a comfortable handle. You won't go back to white girls after you try this! hehe!

banzaitoyota

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