Blasting Away the Years

A Porsche's engine should look good, right? Our bead-blasted intake manifold now looks sweet.

The manifold originally didn't look so great thanks to dirt and oil. Fortunately the two-piece arrangement makes things easy to clean.

The part on the left has made one trip through the bead blast cabinet. The other one is waiting its turn.

Flip over the manifold halves to see the real story: The insides of the dirty half are covered in black soot.

After the bead blasting, we rinsed things very thoroughly.

And here's our cleaned manifold. Now to join the halves, add the throttle body, install the fuel system, and hook up some oil lines.

The real mess, however, was inside. Between the car’s oil vapor recirculaton system and a suspected rich air/fuel mixture, the inside of the manifold was covered with a thin layer of black goo.

Before we could start bolting pieces back onto our 1984 Porsche 911 Carrera’s engine, we needed to do some cleaning. First up, the cast-aluminum intake manifold. The 3.2-liter Carrera uses a two-piece intake manifold, and ours was looking a bit dingy.

The real mess, however, was inside. Between the car’s oil vapor recirculation system and a suspected rich air/fuel mixture, the inside of the manifold was covered with a thin layer of black goo.

We bead-blasted the manifolds back to like-new condition. Once they get covered with a light film of oil, they should age nicely.

Get topnotch sports car coverage regularly delivered to your mailbox. Subscribe now for tons of sports car content delivered throughout the year.
Join Free Join our community to easily find more project updates.
Comments
turboswede
turboswede UltimaDork
1/4/12 12:25 p.m.

I need to get a bead blaster. So many aluminum items I'd like to clean up without the scouring of sand.

Soda blasting seems to work well for very light work though and the HF tool lets me play with it without investing a ton of money.

Looking good!

David S. Wallens
David S. Wallens Editorial Director
1/4/12 5:18 p.m.

Thanks. The manifolds made a few trips through the cabinet as the intake runners were pretty gross. Our big paranoia was any remaining grit, so the rinsing process was very, very, very thorough.

jstein77
jstein77 SuperDork
1/17/12 9:55 a.m.

You should polish the Porsche logos!

You'll need to log in to post.

Sponsored by

Classic Motorsports House Ad

Our Preferred Partners
m24RTXgXK1qU6Y7n1zBTenChqkDbDV6sSsLaZzUL7bmQ5NzsV6MRJ7YdKgILwF4C