Carb cleaning via soda blasting??

[fjrpierre]

http://www.aircooledtech.com/tools-on-the-cheap/soda_blaster/

Anyone have experience/opinion on this (says the man who is about to receive one of David's wonderful carb kits and has never seen the inside of a carb, much less cleaned one... )

[simi_ed]

Personally, I'd skip ANY abrasive and only, use chemical cleaning methods.  IMHO, the passages are calibrated and any 'porting' would effect mixture proportions.  But do tell us how it works for you.

[threejagsteve]

I have some experience with soda blasters (actually, I own one...) and IMHO they'd be fine for the outsides of the carbs, but that soft aluminum and brass is machined to a fine tolerance on the inside (at least theoretically) and while it'd likely be OK, why take the chance?

Also, there'd be a risk of those soda particles getting where you can't easily get them out - and believe me, they get in EVERYWHERE! That alone could cause you more work than using the blaster would save.

When I cleaned my carbs, I bought 6 large spray cans of Gumout Carb and Choke Cleaner (because they were running a good sale and it was the cheapest ). I used 5-1/2 of them, but then my carbs hadn't been touched since the bike was new and had 18 years and 34K mi. of crud, inside and out.

As I was spraying them down, I collected all the runoff in an old metal coffee can, which I then poured fairly quickly into a large glass bottle with a tight-sealing cap. That stuff (or at least one of the ingredients) is extremely volatile, and I wanted to save it for a parts dip and for cleaning shop rags. Thrifty is as thrifty does!  

Then it was down to the fine cleaning, with more spray and an assortment of tools. See my "Running Ragged in SoCal" thread for a more detailed description if you fel the need...

Cheers, and good luck!
threejagsteve