In the course of KZ650 engine pre assembling preparations I had yet one job to do: cleaning oil pan (came from 1991 Zephyr 750 and has ports for oil cooler), transmission cover and bearing cap. Bearing cap and transmission cover looked not bad after being washed with gasoline and soaking cleaning solution I use for aluminum parts, however they needed to be brightened a bit.
However, the oil pan was a rough case: it’s insides were all bright and nice after gasoline, cleaning solution and high pressure washer, but outer surface was a mess of grey aluminum, dirt and oxidation, and remains of old paint, that no pressured gasoline, nor pressured water were able to remove,. My first idea was to treat it with glass beads blasting. But the closest workshop that could do the proper job is placed some 25 kilometers from my garage; and with only one part to blast and all that snow that we’ve got in the middle of the winter (not mentioning low temperatures) glass beads blasting didn’t seem to be a very bright idea. And anyway, I don’t like the finish after glass beads blasting, I like my oil pans to be semi polished.
So I replenished my abrasive supplies and proceeded to the work. Couldn’t say it was an easy cake, but as Terry Pratchett’ Nac Mac Feegles were used to say: “Just that? Nae problemo!”. To give you idea of what was done, here are photos in pairs “before” and “after”:
Doing the work, I had to constantly remind myself: we are not going to polish the pan, we just make it look decent… Looks like I managed to persuade myself not to do polishing, however I indeed did some sandpapering to remove casting flaws like this:
The pan looks pretty nice after I finished with it.
I also painted an oil plug (which was made not removable in case of Zephyr 750) to increase its corrosion protection.
And here are the bearing cap and transmission cover I mentioned in the beginning.Just clean parts ready for further usage.
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