General Category > Quadrajet Carb Talk and Tips

Carb cleaning

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old cars:
For someone doing one carb who does not own an ultrasonic cleaner.
Take an old pot large enough for your carburetor parts, filled with water and Cliff's recipe ( or whatever your preference ). Heat it on a hot plate till it boils. Do not use any toxic or flammable chemicals. Someone told me about this so I had to try it. I was surprised how well it worked. I would say as good or better than my solvent based parts cleaner. Just wear gloves and use your brush if needed.

77cruiser:
Do you ever use baking soda to blast a carb?

Cliff Ruggles:
I only use ultra fine glass beads here.  Tried all sorts of other media over the years and it works the best and helps prepare the finish of the metal parts for zinc plating.  Softer media works very poorly on rusted parts because you need to get deep into any pitting or they parts will have dark/black spots on them when they come out of the plater.

There is no substitute for a little manual labor when it comes to cleaning castings.  Wear a good pair of chemical resistant gloves and get a good stiff paint brush.  I pull the basket up from time to time and remove some of the heavy grime with the paint brush, then back in the heated ultra sonic solution it goes. 

NEVER for any reason mess around with some of these "odd" chemicals folks are recommending on line, like ciitrus based cleaners, muratic acid baths, etc.  I've seen some of them strip the coating right off the castings.  Also be aware that if you do anything to pull the zinc from the original material it becomes more difficult to get a nice uniform color when they get their "bath" to color the castings.  Acid is NEVER a good idea so don't even go down that path....FWIW.

For the record I am NOT doing any restoration work or plating of any kind these days.  I also stopped taking in rebuilds other than a few Marine builds over the Winter and some fully rebuilt/restored carburetors that did not work for the end user no matter how many times they went back to the "builder".

My goal is to get completely caught up, take a break for a while, and not have any backlog......

old cars:
And do not confuse Glass Bead with Crushed Glass. I have had different people tell me they use Glass Bead but when I look at there media it is crushed glass or some other type of course media. Crushed glass is that exactly, with jagged sharp edges. Glass bead is man formed round beads.( for lack of a better word ) And of course they come in different grits ( like sandpaper does )

Kenth:
I have used this http://maxiblast.com/blast-media/maxi-clean/ for at least 25 years.
Does not destroy original plating on carbs, but removes soot and oxide along with the usual grime.
Sometimes i use a heated ultrasonic cleaner for degeasing and finishes off with blasting if needed.
Sometimes brakecleaner or paint thinner will do the degreasing.
Rusted steel part goes into a fosfor acid bath and brushed after for shine and leave a rustproof surface.
No blasting with glass beads, no replating needed.

FWIW

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