Restoring Engine Cases To Better Than New! | RM250 Rebuild 7

hey guys been a minute since I picked up the camera feels weird to be filming myself again but hope you guys had a Merry Christmas and hope the new year is treating you well but today it is back to work on the rm250 now what we got going on today is we are gonna be shining up some of the engine parts mostly the engine cases back here and some of the engine covers now I've already gone through and cleaned up the engine cases in the parts washer got all the grime and dirt off of them they came out pretty good but they're still pretty dull scratched and pitted from 20 years of use so we're gonna be restoring that shine to something even better than new now before I get shining on the crank cases I want to pop out the bearings I'll be replacing these anyways always a good idea but how I'm gonna do this is by dropping the crank cases and I believe there's a bearing on this cover to you yeah drop them in the oven over here at 350 degrees heat them up for about a half hour and how this is gonna work is the aluminum which the cases are made of expands and a faster rate than the steel that is the material the bearings and those bearings should just drop right out so this method is a lot less damaging and a less stressful in the crank cases compared to just hammering them out now before I get started I'm gonna pull out the stopper place that hold the bearings in place it looks like I got a few on this case too now while the ovens heating up I'm just gonna shave off these gaskets so that way they don't get baked down the oven now if you guys are looking for a good ask a scraper and it packs screwdriver I will link both of these down below these are probably the most common tools I use when working on engine before you pop out those bearings you want to make note of which way the bearings are facing you can see this one has a seal on this side other side does not same with this one here on the other crankcase one thing to make note of is this bearing has a lip on it see right around the edge of it so that way it's held in with those stopper plates we've got some aluminum foil laid down inside the oven here to catch those bearings as they start to drop out alright let's give her 30 minutes see what happens I just heard a loud clunk in the oven I think he's bearing they're starting to fall out oh yeah counter chef one popped out already see how this right case is looking oh two bearings sitting there should be able to just pop those ones out with little tap that is freakin sweet got one more bearing right here oh this is hot sometimes you can just pick it up and drop it bearing will come out yeah we're gonna have to use a puller on that one that was easy just like butter one thing I just noticed when you heat up the crank case these colors back here loosen up so make sure not to lose those and if you need to replace those for any reason you can pop them out pretty easily just by heating up the crank case it looks like yeah that method works pretty dang good I've only done a couple times but man that'll save you from a lot of hassle and potential damage to your cases the bearings for the clutch arm which are usually way down inside that hole I've already got them out but I was able to pull those out with the blind bearing puller now if you guys are interested in picking up one of these pullers they're super handy for crankcases wheel bearings linkage bearings anything like that super handy to have but I will link it down below apparently this engine has something just flopping around in at one point you can see the damage here on the crank cases and on the inner clutch cover a little scrapes and scratches there I don't want any of those bits coming loose so I'm gonna smooth all that out with the die grinder got a little flap wheel here also one thing I forgot about here on this crank case there's a big chip right here also from I don't even know what it was something broke loose and the engine I'm gonna smooth that out as well now at this point the cases are completely bare but you can see they're still pretty dull got some dirt staining corrosion just crustiness on them now there's a few different ways to restore the shine the first being is vapor blasting that requires some expensive machinery you could also use some sort of chemical cleaning like a edging cleaner I'll show you guys what we can do with that and the third option is to use some sort of physical polishing or buffing so like cleaning wheels wire brush scotch-brite steel wool that kind of thing that is the approach I'll be going with these now the reason I'm going that route is because it's cheap I can do it here and I love the final result of it it is definitely my favorite you end up with something looking like this which is absolutely epic but before we do that let me show you what an aluminum edging cleaner will do with these now I've been using the Eagle one magwell cleaner for a while but I think they've started to discontinue it and I was looking for it at NAPA the other day and ended up planning this stuff the aluminum brightener it has many of the same ingredients that the megawatt cleaner has so let's see if this stuff is a good alternative to the magwell cleaner so I'm gonna give this stuff a shot inside of here try to loosen up some of that dirt staining so you simply spray it on and let it soak for about 30 seconds you see it's starting to turn white there that means it is starting to kind of itch the aluminum now you definitely don't want to use this stuff on anything polished or anything that has any type of coating like paint or anodizing it'll actually eat and icing off I like to brush it around it works a little better so you got most of that dirt staining off of there it's still a little bit left to right they're not exactly sure what that is just some crap in the aluminum but it doesn't necessarily brighten the aluminum up it's more of just cleaning the dirt staining off like you would see like down here so I'm actually gonna hit the entire crankcase with the aluminum cleaner and then move on to giving it an actual shine the Napa aluminum brightener was the success you can see it got rid of majority of that dirt staining and corrosion still a little bit of staining left over but it leaves it pretty dull you can see in comparison to the other crankcase now one thing I should mention about the aluminum brightener you definitely want to wear gloves that's a given and if you're gonna be using quite a bit of it I would wear a respirator and goggles or glasses as well so let's get to shining this baby up first thing we're gonna have to do is start smoothing out or blending in some of these scrapes and scratches on the bottom side you can see there's definitely some good sized Nicks here so these scrapes will need to smooth out before we give the crankcase a nice shine I'll be attacking the crankcase with a few different abrasive products now these are considered flap wheels this medium size wheel and the larger wheel are pretty sweet and the fact they have like this fiber or scotch-brite material in between the flaps of sandpaper works really well for smoothing out the metal and ensures you don't have like waviness or dips when you're all finished up and then the smaller wheel is just straight sandpaper super tiny really nice to have for those tight areas now this bigger wheel goes on a bench grinder this one is for a die grinder I know this wheels super worn out and you replace it and then this one goes on each Rimal now you don't absolutely need the bigger wheel that is gonna just rip really fast and save you a lot of time but you could get away with just those two all three of these ret grit however you can get them in higher grit but typically 80 grit works best for blending in scratches and pits so let's get to work and see what these things will do got this thing looking sweet and all smoothed out no scratches or pits left over it's insane how smooth this finish is compared to the original cast finish now the trick with these flat wheels is to use light pressure you got to let that sandpaper and fiber do its job and you don't want to spend too much time in one specific area especially with these smaller flat wheels you'll end up with some waviness or divots if you do that now what's on two more cleaning type wheels now these are strictly made of fiber there's no st. paper in them so we're going to give more of a brush type look now it's going to be tough to get in all those tight areas especially on this crankcase with just these wheels but we'll give it a shot now where these cleaning wheels really fall short is if you're trying to get in tight areas like inside of there that it really matters inside the flywheel area but if you're trying to get in these spots here yeah it's kind of past the limit of those wheels so what I'm gonna do instead is send this crankcase out to my buddy Josh who does vapor blasting he's gonna go ahead blast it get the whole thing shiny so essentially what we'll have is a completely clean and shiny crankcase but I will maintain the brushed finish that I have here so best of both worlds now I promise you guys I will be getting a vapor blaster soon I'd love to show you guys the capabilities of them they're pretty sweet just need to make some room in the shop for one but as you guys can tell I love trying to do everything I can here at home now if we have something like this well there's not as many tight areas we could use the flap wheels and cleaning wheels to get this thing completely shined up and give it a brushed finish after a couple minutes of sanding got the crankcase all smoothed out those scratches are pits left over I mostly used the smaller flat wheel for some of the bigger scratches I used the bigger flat wheel I had a big scratch right there smooth it out in matter a seconds so I am going to give it the finishing touch with these cleaning wheels here now I found this fine point attachment for the dremel that should allow us to get in these tighter areas a little better and clean that up a bit more seemed to work pretty well in those tight areas definitely works better than the cleaning wheel for the really tight stuff man this thing is looking better and better every minute we work on it cut that nice brush finish we were going for now if you really want to finish it off really consistent I will grab a piece of scotch brite make sure it has like a sharp edge on it that we can get in the tighter areas and just go through spend a minute or two and just kind of rebrand the same direction over the whole thing so in review we use the small flap wheels to smooth out the scrapes scratches and pits you don't want those showing through when you bring out this brushed finish and then we used the cleaning wheels this one here along with a smaller one to really give it a consistent shine give it that true brushed finish and I would say it worked pretty dang good as far as how many of these wheels you'll need you could do probably five or six crank cases with a set of these they last pretty long sandpaper holds up very well now the cleaning wheels honestly don't last very long at all I was able to get this crankcase done with one of each so as you can see they do wear down pretty quick but they are essential in getting that really cool finish now if you guys are only concerned with getting a clean finish and not removing scrapes and scratches you only want to bring back the shine these cleaning wheels do a great job I'll show you what it can do on this clutch cover so you can see in like five to ten seconds sanding you get a pretty dang sweet finish there now like I was saying earlier these cleaning wheels don't really last too long so to preserve them and make them last as long as possible you want to stay away from sharp edges like right here that'll tear them up pretty quick you also want to use them at a lower speed that'll help prolong the life of them and if you're doing any heavy removal of like corrosion or trying to sand out a scratch definitely use something more aggressive like a flat wheel now I'm sure a lot of you are wondering if you do this type of finish how do you keep up on the shine and prevent it from getting corroded and really dirty quickly the biggest thing is keeping your bike as clean as possible don't let dirt sit on there for a long period of time and you can also periodically clean it up with a scotch brite pad just go through give a little brush and that'll help maintain it you could also clearcoat it alright the crank case is basically done just got to sand some the gasket surfaces clean up a few small areas but for the most part it is done on the outside so I would say the entire process took about 4550 minutes to go through brush this thing completely so a couple more pointers to you guys wanting to do something like this make sure when you're brushing or sanding you always go in the same direction so you want to work the long way and not across like the short way that'll give you just that nice consistent shine and also with some of the smaller flap wheels like these you don't want to spend too much time in one area where else you kind of create a divot you want to be really broad with your strokes now obviously there's a limit on how much you want to sand into the cases if you have a deep scratch that goes half way through the thickness you obviously don't want to sand that out you can see it gets pretty thin in some areas but for your average scratching and pitting on the bottom side that you can sand out just fine now if you guys want to take on a project like this I will have all the links to the wheels the tools including the die grind the Dremel all down below in the description realistically you can get away with about 35 to 40 dollars worth of product to clean up both cases that doesn't include the bigger wheel that's a little more expensive nor does it include the tools although these aren't too spendy the Dremel is around 60 and the die grinder is 50 all right it's a couple days later and look what we have here in this case turned out gorgeous Josh did an incredible job blasting it every little nook and cranny inside and out is clean just completely spotless and I don't really think the video does it justice either this thing is perfectly smooth and shiny just seeing this thing really makes me want to get a wet blaster now you can see the difference on the inside not that it really matters that much compared to the other case this one is dull and still kind of stained up inside whereas this one is perfectly clean it's always nice to start with a completely clean slate thought I'd be a good time to compare and contrast blasted versus brushed see there's a little bit of difference there the Blasted is definitely I would say it's more consistent the brushed has more shine to it I guess it all depends on your personal preference I know some people prefer the blasted look others prefer the brushed look and some people like just a plain old dull edge aluminum look now personally I'm a sucker for the brushed look looks more trick more like a factory part the vapor blasted look is more like the OEM style but one thing you can't ignore about vapor blasting is how much better it works at getting in all those nooks and crannies gets everything perfectly clean and consistent and that's something a little bit harder to do when you're brushing so now you guys have a pretty good idea of what the three different styles look like make your decision based off of that I showed you how to brush the aluminum showed you how to edge it although that one doesn't look very good and now you know what vapor blasting looks like so if you want your parts vapor blasted whether that's a crankcase clutch cover swing arm frame anything aluminum josh is the guy to go you he did an incredible job turn it around really quick and just absolutely killed it on this one so I will put his Instagram down below even if you guys just want to look at shiny parts all day definitely go hit him up go give him a follow he's cranking out parts that looked just like this day in and day out alright so now I've got a dilemma here got the cylinder back from repair as you guys remember it had some detonation damage up here they went through and fixed all that that was a Power seal welded it up replated it looks absolutely freakin incredible brand new basically but now I want the cylinder to look just like the cases I want everything to match so I'm kind of thinking this part would be pretty tough to brush I honestly would rather just have it vapor blasted and call it a day so I'm gonna send this thing out to Josh he's gonna blast it should have sent it the first time around but it is gonna be looking just as good as the crankcase if I were to do it all over again personally what I would do is sand out all the scratches on the cases like it did send them out for vapor blasting and then do a brush finish on top of that it's gonna be much easier to get that nice brush finish when you already have a clean service to work from I think vapor blasting is definitely the way to go on cases and cylinders there's absolutely no denying how well it works and then if you want a brushed finish you can just go on top of the vapor blasting with a wheel or a brush and give it that look you desire which is what I'm gonna do now with the left case gonna give it a brush to match the right case but I need to send the cylinder out to Josh I cannot wait to get it back and see how frickin shiny its gonna be holy nuts guys I do not even know what to say just look at it it's probably even better than I expected but the vapor blasting definitely made all the difference there went to bed I'll get it that clean without the blasting so after the blasting I just went through and hit it with the die grinder of the cleaning wheel on there and then did a hand buff and when your hand buffing it or using the cleaning wheel there you want to go in the same direction I go the long way across the crankcase that is just freakin epic and I'm pumped and better yet it matches up perfectly with the right case it doesn't get any better than that so as you'll notice there's a few things I need to touch up here gasps of the surfaces I need a sand see what else need to pop in bearings actually most importantly I am going to protect these cases from corroding or getting stained I put so much work into him I've never really had a problem with it on my 125 or 250 they are perfectly shiny still but with this set I want to try it something new and you guys will be seeing that in the next video and for you guys with the good eye you might have noticed I got some Krusty frickin bolts holding this thing together so I will be replacing all the engine hardware in the next video as well so stay tuned let's take a little break from polishing I've got something really cool to show you guys I know a lot of you have been hyped about lately it is the release of the prime hoodies been working on these for probably like six months now but here they are so it's like a dark charcoal color like a gray with a black 3d embroidered logo really cool looking these things are very comfortable and warm they fit great I promise you guys will not be disappointed think I nailed it with these ones now my goal with these was obviously to have something comfortable and warm but have a color that doesn't show dirt or grime when you're working the shop or even going for a trail ride and then have a material and design that's gonna last a long time and make sure your money is well-spent now these hoodies are completely custom designed for you guys I didn't just take someone else's hoodie and slap my logo on it months and months of testing went into these as you can see this is my own branded hoodie so if you guys are interested in checking these out they will be over at primum XCOM I'll also have them linked down below I've got a few more aluminum pieces here that'll be cleaning up now the clutch cover is actually magnesium I'm curious how that will clean up on the buffer with those cleaning wheels water pump and actually all these parts I will be doing Sarah code on but some of these have Nicks and scrapes that I want to clean up just kind of smooth out before I throw some seracote down and then the flywheel I'm just gonna clean up the corrosion on this doesn't necessarily need to be coated with anything if it's underneath the flywheel cover with a good gasket it shouldn't have any problem corroding so I'm gonna get to you cleaning this stuff up so I've got the clutch cover all stripped down to the bare magnesium I'm surprised this magnesium actually shines that pretty good so in some of these tighter areas I used a dremel scotch-brite attachment as you can see the finish is pretty inconsistent it doesn't look that great and there's tons of pits and scratches on the bottom side of the cover so what I'm gonna do is bring this thing back over to the buffer before I was using the finer wheel now I'm gonna go at it with the rougher wheel to smooth some of these out and then finish it up with a finer wheel to give it that nice consistent shine this is just insane guys there's absolutely no Knicks leftover in this cover it is crazy what those wheels will do so I'll show you kind of how is getting a consistent finish here I was using the side of the wheel a lot if you use just the face of it you'll actually kind of warp or make dips in the surface there so on something with a big surface area like this you want to use the side of the wheel as much as you can now we're going to give this cover a sweet finish with the finer wheel done buffing with the fine pad looks pretty sweet nice and shiny but it is very inconsistent on the face as you can see so I'm gonna finish it off with the fine pad by hand and I'm gonna go let's see here this is the top of the cover right here so I am going to go from left to right so I'm gonna brush in this direction here you don't want to go up and down or swirl just go in one direction and that will give it a really sweet finish this is just frickin sweet so consistent and smooth all the way around I don't even know if I want to put that on the bike now the reason why I'm leaving this covered bare and not doing any type of coding is because engine covers get a ton of wear when you're riding the bike obviously the boots are rubbing against the cover with dirt and all sorts of abrasive material they're scratches it up so whether you put powder coat or seracote or anodizing except for harden passing all that stuff is gonna wear right off and so with a bear cover nothing to wear off and when it gets scratched it up just grab a pad give it a little cleanup and you are back to looking like this and besides who doesn't love the look of brushed aluminum I think that's as clean as it gets right there now the next thing can be working on is smoothening out the scrapes on the bottom of the water pump cover I don't want those showing through when I say are cut it and I'll be using the coarse wheel on the buffer to clean this up like always seem to get carried away and start smoothing out every little pit and casting line but you know what looks pretty good and it's gonna look even better when it is sarah coded now it's on to cleaning up the flywheel looking good now this is kind of common sense but whenever you're doing any sort of grinding or sanding with metal you want to wear some gloves a respirator that's huge and some eye protection so don't be stupid guys now for the cylinder head I am going to replace this with an aftermarket Fathead cylinder head billet one but just for the heck of it I'll clean up the detonation on the bottom side here it's got some pitting inside the combustion chamber and I'm just gonna turn it into a cool-looking paperweight check out this beauty I love just thinking around and seeing what I can do with the pads turned out pretty freakin sweet now obviously at this point I can't use the head any longer ground down the dome pretty far to get rid of that detonation I mean I could have fixed it up with some TIG welding but I was more so just seeing what I could do with those pads so I've got a pretty cool paperweight now now the last thing I'll be shining up is the flywheel cover this is the original one off the bike and notice that had a crack along with some jb weld repair so I won't be using that one but I found a different one here that's in pretty good shape just scratched it up and worn down it is magnesium like the clutch cover so it should clean up really well so let's get after it and I just can't get enough of this brush finish I can do this stuff all day long this one turned out really good pretty much perfect got a nice camera one of them focus on it come on now yeah this one took about 30 minutes to do I end up having to bust out the rubber sanding drum to remove the lettering I think it looks a lot cleaner without anything on there just a nice clean simple look now we're gonna pair up the flower cover with the clutch cover that's about as good as it gets right there guys man these parts look sweet for being 20 years old guys I can't stress this enough if you're gonna be doing any sort of sanding or polishing on metal or sanding off paint you gotta protect yourself so first off wear a respirator with good filters on them these are P 100 rated so that essentially means these trap 99.9% of the particles fuse gases they are a really good investment actually these are only like 20 bucks the respirator itself this one is super nice has got high protection that is HUGE if you want to go something cheaper you get to get some like that and a smaller respirator and then definitely wear some gloves and if you're gonna be doing a lot of sanding wear long sleeve or a sweatshirt and take it off before you go inside also if you're hardcore about the stuff I would recommend getting a exhaust fan or some sort of ventilation that is HUGE but guys take it from me I was extremely sick a couple years ago with cancer so I definitely don't mess around when it comes to this stuff it honestly really isn't that expensive to protect yourself you can get a cheaper respirator some glasses and gloves maybe get a setup like this one here you can get that the gloves glasses for under like 40 or 50 bucks very wise investment and as far as the filters go these are around 15 or 20 bucks and I would change them out every month or every other month depending on how much you're sanding or painting like always I will have every single thing I use throughout the video link down below in the description one more thing before I go as many of you know I am doing a giveaway with this bike the 2002 armed 50 that I'm building currently so when it's all finished up I'll be giving it away completely free all you have to do is sign up is go down below in the description hit that first link and that is it I want to give a big thank you to you for watching the video I really appreciate it I've got some big stuff on the channel coming soon I'm gonna be doing some coatings rebuilding the engine lots of great things come in with the rme so definitely hit that subscribe button down below ring the bell and I will see you in a video coming soon keep her prime

Channel: Cameron Niemela

Views: 392,539

Rating: 4.9173412 out of 5

Keywords: Dirt Bike, Motorcycle, 2 Stroke, Two Stroke, Dirt Bike Build, Cameron Niemela, Niemela, Dirt Bike Repair, Two Stroke Build, Two Stroke Rebuild, Dirt Bike Rebuild, Dirt Bike Project, Suzuki, RM250, Suzuki RM250, RM250 Project, RM250 Build, Team Pryme, RM250 Rebuild, Fixing RM250, RM250 Engine, 2 Stroke Engine, Two Stroke Engine, Cleaning Engine, Clean Engine Parts, Restoring Engine Cases To Better Than New, Restoring Cases, Restoring Engine, Polishing Cases, Cleaning Cases

Id: EKKzh7BZhRY

Length: 34min 37sec (2077 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020