a bead blaster ate my intake!

I think they call that character, this is the H.A.M.B. put it on and run with it.

 

Glass bead won't remove good aluminum material..

The manifold may have been painted with aluminum "Cast blast" paint.. I do a lot of them with the stuf. After blasting. Customers don't like the finish of some raw castings. Especially old GM (non Winters) intakes. The aluminum they use is rough, porous and multi colored.

 

Run it with the natural finish. The clear will yellow after time and look like shit.

 

White puss?

 

I think they look great Jeff!

Brian

 

Lots of miss-information in this thread...but Tommy has it right. It's porosity.
Back in the day when that intake was sand cast, foundry technology was still pretty primitive. Poorly vented patterns along with lack of alloys to prevent gas escaping from the casting was always a challenge.
I was working in a foundry in the late 60's and it was always an issue as the stuff we made was for the hospital industry. Everything had to be polished or chromed.
Usually , the deeper you go under the outer skin, the more gas holes you'll find. Also, some sand will show up as black spots when polishing. Glass-beading would remove the sand but leave a hole.
I've polished many, many old intakes and most of these problems actually are not too noticeable when polished but show up a lot worse when glassbeaded.
I'm running that exact same intake on one of my cars, you'll love it with progressive linkage! If you were up-close to mine, you'd see the pinholes and black spots, but you would really have to look hard.

 

same stuff I hear when I blast other peoples "rust free" sheetmetal. They get it back with pin holes in it and its my fault cuz it only had surface rust then they dropped it off. I still don't understand that thinking.....surface rust isn't rust free. Rust is like an iceberg.....a little on the surface is usually just the tip. Most surface rust isn't just the beginning like most people think....its usually what appears just before the holes cuz it started from the other side.

 

I've never seen corrosion just effect the top of any surface. It always goes below the surface regardless of what material the corrosion is reacting to. End result, pitting and/or complete deterioration.

 

I Agree 100%

 

The first time I blasted it, I used black slag, then clear coated it. None of the edge deterioration was there, and nowhere the amount of pin holes. I didn't like the dull gray, and the clear was too glossy, so I reblasted it, the second time using glass bead. Maybe the combination of 2 blastings killed it.

Well, therein lies the problem.....

It looks better in photos than real life, I'll probably live with it. Once installed, and all the linkage, hoses, plugwires, etc are installed, it will mostly be covered up anyways.

 

Looks fine..what you haven't messed with old metal before?? This pretty normal stuff here

 

Glad to hear it, most things I read say it will run awful on three carbs. I do have progressive linkage.

 

Its a cool old intake love it for what it is, I understand your distress at 'finding' the pitting, but as everyone says, it was already there. Think more on the hands that , that intake pasted through as it was cast, dressed, and machined , packed etc. The History of it, that's what makes it cool, the pits just add to the story.

 

God, I hate that word...