dedonderosa

yup have seen this too many times before, you will never get it fully clean no matter what, either paint strip it and paint it yourself but IMHO powder coating is not good at all. that shit gets in the oil and will chew up the bearings.

my buddy had one done and they used coal slag to strip it, reason being it give a good surface for the powder to bite into, they told him they fully wash it out etc with cleaners blah blah blah,. i soaked it in hot water and within minutes i had coal slag all in the bottom of the bucket. i then drilled out the rivets to see inside the baffle, and oh boy there was a shit ton still in there

LeonV

I am one of the guys who lost a motor due to this, even after cleaning the VC out. It will now serve as garage decoration, perhaps a good start to a wall of shame.

rpg51

Just out of curiosity - how many $? Does it come thru painted?

Charper732

The valve cover is cast aluminum. That is porous enough to get powdered coated without the needed of sandblasting it. We just strip em and PC em with no issues at all.

Motorsport_S

i've seen this before too. yeah don't even think about using it. worth losing an engine over a valve cover?

Royaltrophy

this is a crazy story. Shame people who know how to do this stuff don't know enough not to blast stuff...

Car Analogy

Right. Its their profession. They should know more about it than I do, than I ever will. Instead they are doing things that destroy peoples engines. Shameful.

dedonderosa

yeah chemically strip it and powder coat it, DO NOT ever let someone blast it no way!!! not worth risking it

Charper732

No, actually. It's not their profession. Just because someone is a Powder Coater does not mean they are a car mechanic or know ANYTHING about vehicles. They make a living applying coatings. It's YOUR JOB to inform them of what needs to be avoided. The only reasonable expectation you should have of a powder coater is that they will mask/plug all threads and will usually know what gasket surfaces to mask. A lot of coaters know from experience of doing certain parts of areas to be masked but its still your job to tell them.

And just because I know it'll get asked. No, there is no way to mask a part and still sand blast it. It will ALWAYS find away past the masking...thats just how it is.

JonC

I know this is an old thread. You can blast it, but you need to dry ice blast the covers so that the media evaporates and isnt left behind. You can also use aircraft remover or something similar, but honestly that stuff is incredibly nasty. There are some shops that you can go to that will strip your parts, but then you also need to make sure that you get all the chemicals out afterwards.