Bead blasting/chemical cleaning

[C4ME]

Has anyone bead blasted their intake hardware (plenum, tubes, manifold)? I have my upper appart and want to clean things up. The tubes and plenum have what looks like oil spots on them (kinda speckles) which I have scrubbed with a wire brush in a hidden area and made a little difference. I was thinking of having the bit bead blasted, but do not know what it will do to the look of them. I believe the texture on them would be altered, but was wondering what folks thought. I also am considering having them chemically cleaned.

 

[77-85]

I rebuilt my engine last year and when I was getting the block cleaned, I got the machine shop to clean my plenum, runners and manifold as well. The shop used some short of plastic based beads to clean the plenum and runners and they came out spotless (looked like new, and the texture of the material was unchanged), but they recommended against using the same process on the intake baseplate. Instead they cleaned the baseplate using some sort of solution used for cleaning aluminum cylinder heads.

The manifold baseplate did not come out as clean as the plenum and runners, but accorting to the shop, using the beads on the manifold was risky as they could not be sure none of the beads would get stuck and later dislodged.

 

[C4ME]

I rebuilt my engine last year and when I was getting the block cleaned, I got the machine shop to clean my plenum, runners and manifold as well. The shop used some short of plastic based beads to clean the plenum and runners and they came out spotless (looked like new, and the texture of the material was unchanged), but they recommended against using the same process on the intake baseplate. Instead they cleaned the baseplate using some sort of solution used for cleaning aluminum cylinder heads.

The manifold baseplate did not come out as clean as the plenum and runners, but accorting to the shop, using the beads on the manifold was risky as they could not be sure none of the beads would get stuck and later dislodged.

Thanks very much for the quick comment. I am ready to take them to the guys who did my heads and was not sure it was a good idea. I am very excited as my heads came back looking new! I had to ask the guy if he had lost mine!

Thanks again,
Joe