SY2932
Administrator
First off, casting by PAS and welding by Garrett is POOP :tdown:. There are numerous voids in the castings. Meaning that the "virgin" material that was used in their manufacture was more of a whore... More than likely scrap material that was melted down to be reused and/or contaminated with inpurties. There are so many voids, it is impossible to sand them away. Sanding deeper to remove them only exposes new ones... The welds on the intercooler are of similar "quality" or lack thereof, with some not achieveing full penetration. I HAND SANDED through two of them on the throttle body side of the intercooler and had to get them rewelded. I know another member had a similar result so that's why I didn't use power when cleaning up the welds and still got bit.
The paint started to crack off my intercooler two years ago. Last year it started to peel off in large "sheets"
. I have never been one who was embarrassed to pop the hood and show someone the "heart of the beast". However, the peeling paint looked fugly. So, the intercooler came off to get a little cleaning up. I have always considered the intercooler and the upper intake a "matched set" so it got some attention too. I have close to sixity hours in the endeavor so far and the results aren't too bad...
I didn't sandblast off what was left of the finish based on what the castings looked like and I am VERY glad that I didn't. I had semipolished the upper intake when I first got my truck back in '99. I was going the polish the inside of the emblem too but opted to paint it instead since it would give a nice contrast. I power sanded off the old finish with an angle grinder and various sanding discs and surface conditioning pads. I taped off the top of the upper intake around the emblem so that I could clean out the letters with glass beads and LOW air pressure in the blast cabinet. I watched with horror as the freshed sanded top INSTANTLY took on the appearance of having been shot with a 12 gauge loaded with birdshot. Blasting exposed SO many voids I would have given up even attempting to polish these pigs right from the get go if I would have done that first.
The most time consuming part has been all the block sanding to get a perfectly flat surface. I don't care for "fun house" polish jobs, the ones that have "waves" in the surface because all the work is done powered because it is LOTS faster (time is money). Block sanding the top of the intercooler took about six hours alone. Most folks sand off the markings because they are a royal pain to polish. I did so on the front of the intercooler since it isn't visable anyways. I left the other ones intact however. Despite the issues, I think it'll look decent when it all gets back together after about a dozen more hours of hand polishing....
The paint started to crack off my intercooler two years ago. Last year it started to peel off in large "sheets"
. I have never been one who was embarrassed to pop the hood and show someone the "heart of the beast". However, the peeling paint looked fugly. So, the intercooler came off to get a little cleaning up. I have always considered the intercooler and the upper intake a "matched set" so it got some attention too. I have close to sixity hours in the endeavor so far and the results aren't too bad...
I didn't sandblast off what was left of the finish based on what the castings looked like and I am VERY glad that I didn't. I had semipolished the upper intake when I first got my truck back in '99. I was going the polish the inside of the emblem too but opted to paint it instead since it would give a nice contrast. I power sanded off the old finish with an angle grinder and various sanding discs and surface conditioning pads. I taped off the top of the upper intake around the emblem so that I could clean out the letters with glass beads and LOW air pressure in the blast cabinet. I watched with horror as the freshed sanded top INSTANTLY took on the appearance of having been shot with a 12 gauge loaded with birdshot. Blasting exposed SO many voids I would have given up even attempting to polish these pigs right from the get go if I would have done that first.
The most time consuming part has been all the block sanding to get a perfectly flat surface. I don't care for "fun house" polish jobs, the ones that have "waves" in the surface because all the work is done powered because it is LOTS faster (time is money). Block sanding the top of the intercooler took about six hours alone. Most folks sand off the markings because they are a royal pain to polish. I did so on the front of the intercooler since it isn't visable anyways. I left the other ones intact however. Despite the issues, I think it'll look decent when it all gets back together after about a dozen more hours of hand polishing....
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