Thread: bead blasting

I've got my wheels all taken apart now. I want to take the rims and the hubs in for bead blasting tomorrow. I know not to blast the brake panels and just to polish them. I also found Bob's post about leaving the bearings in the hubs when blasting to protect the seats. My question is that I have never had this done before and am curious about the general price range that this service should run. I really have no idea and would like to have a little knowledge before I head to the shop tomorrow.

It should be $40-$60...Prices vary depending on area, but wheels are very easy and not much work..It would be a very quick job. They will even fit in small blast cabinets.

Harbor Freight has small blast cabinets for around a $100 .
I bought one - works good . Need compressor .

Rim halves are one of the few CT70 items that can safely be sand blasted. I wouldn't recommend using silica sand but if the shop you've selected does, no worries. New rims are something like $70 a pop (both halves). Check yours over thoroughly. I see a lot of them with bends in the outer bead area. If there's a lot of heavy rust exfoliation, might be worth scrapping them in favor of nice, straight, new OEM examples. On the other hand, the hubs are cast aluminum; care must be taken in the blasting process. That means soft media with low pressure, not the strong suit of a production sandblasting shop.

As for buying your own blasting setup, that's opening a can of worms that will cost a lot more than farming-out the job.

The rims are in really good shape. Just a little surface rust. They came apart on their own when I loosened the rim bolts. Still has the original Nittos on the rims. Bob your post : http://planetminitrails.com/webboard...-aluminum-482/ said #80 grit glass bead is good for the inside and outside of the hubs so I'll mention that to the blaster. He's got a full setup with different media. This isn't really something I'm interested in doing at home.

I had my frame,fork,swing arm,chain guard and 4 wheel halves blasted using aluminum oxide media for 50 bucks, as far as the hubs, I spent hours on the garage floor with steel wool...turned out really nice though.

Thanks everyone for the tips and price guidelines.

Originally Posted by ct93ms

I had my frame,fork,swing arm,chain guard and 4 wheel halves blasted using aluminum oxide media for 50 bucks, as far as the hubs, I spent hours on the garage floor with steel wool...turned out really nice though.

Auminum oxide ranks near the top of the list in terms of hardness (8.5, as I recall) and cutting power. In a blast cabinet, the stuff will quickly frost the glass and is brutal on blast gun parts. Used with care (and low pressure) it can give good results on steel pieces. In my experience, however, the surfaces will be profiled; in other words, it's a bit too aggressive. I define that term as anything beyond the minimum needed to clean the metal. With a sheetmetal frame, there isn't much material thickness in the first place. A commercial outfit that can do this job for $50 is using equipment large enough to do the complete job in under 10 minutes. I long ago gave up on such outfits, got tired of being able to file fingernails on the freshly-blasted surfaces. Not saying that fresh paint won't hold, the rough-textured/thoroughly clean metal should "soak-up" a lot of primer. IMO, it's hunting small game with an elephant gun. Anyone who takes a CT70 frame with any significant rust to one of these places will quickly learn what I mean the hard way

As for softer items, such as the hubs, $10-15 a pop will get them done properly using softer media such as glass bead, with a low pressure/volume gun. Using stel wool must have been one helluva workout(!)

Has anyone herd of using soda as a media, for doing aluminum. I herd never to use steel wool on aluminum it in-beds itself in and then pits right away.

Originally Posted by racerx

Auminum oxide ranks near the top of the list in terms of hardness (8.5, as I recall) and cutting power. In a blast cabinet, the stuff will quickly frost the glass and is brutal on blast gun parts. Used with care (and low pressure) it can give good results on steel pieces. In my experience, however, the surfaces will be profiled; in other words, it's a bit too aggressive. I define that term as anything beyond the minimum needed to clean the metal. With a sheetmetal frame, there isn't much material thickness in the first place. A commercial outfit that can do this job for $50 is using equipment large enough to do the complete job in under 10 minutes. I long ago gave up on such outfits, got tired of being able to file fingernails on the freshly-blasted surfaces. Not saying that fresh paint won't hold, the rough-textured/thoroughly clean metal should "soak-up" a lot of primer. IMO, it's hunting small game with an elephant gun. Anyone who takes a CT70 frame with any significant rust to one of these places will quickly learn what I mean the hard way

As for softer items, such as the hubs, $10-15 a pop will get them done properly using softer media such as glass bead, with a low pressure/volume gun. Using stel wool must have been one helluva workout(!)

Don't know much about bead blasting or what pressure my frame and parts were shot at, but all of it turned out very smooth, in fact the grey metal had the appearance of having already been shot with primer. There was no rust to contend with and maybe that contributed to the smooth finish.