Motor casings

[Yamadaka]

I want to clean up the motor & casings on my Wombat. Any suggestions on works great? Thanks

[Pep]

Cases: If you have everything split apart and the bearings out, a good soak/scrub in hot soapy water and a lot of elbow grease will do the trick. Finish with carb cleaner or acetone to get things squeaky clean. Be sure to pay attention to those small passageways.
If this is a cast cylinder, some soda blasting might be in order (if the rust is bad). Cover up the internals. You can finish the job with some heat paint - don't put an inch coating of paint on there. The head can be blasted too and then get the soapy water treatment.
Hope this helps, probably better ideas out there...
Laurie

[bchappy]

A gallon of Mineral Spirits from Home Depot in one of their 5 gallon buckets works really good to cut grease. It is the closest thing you will find to the products used by garages in their washing vats. Get a garage to help you with disposal as it is not biodegradable. Simple Green is a water based cleaner that works good (also in a 5 gallon bucket) for a final wash. If you want the aluminum to the look new you may want to take it to someone that has a bead blaster (bearing out) or you can just paint the aluminum with a pewter paint which you can get on the Strictly Hodaka site.

Just my take on a "Poor Man's" cleaning.

[socalhodaka]

Bead blasting will look like this. Most of the time after this we leave the centers raw and just paint the outside cases.


The best finish we like is after blasting have them ball burnished and they look like this.


We have this done to alot of the aluminum parts like the lower fork legs, triple clamp, hubs. Its a good finish and holds up and cleans up good after the races.