Table of contents

• Clean the motorcycle with dry ice blasting Spotlessly clean
• Dirt is blasted from the surface
• Hardly suitable for private use
• More information about dry ice blasting

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25th pictures

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Blasting with dry ice.

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Andreas Gschweng feeds the blasting machine with the CO2 pellets cooled to minus 78.5 degrees, …

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… which are crushed in it and accelerated to almost the speed of sound.

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Baked-on dirt: A tough layer of spray oil, fuel residue, and road dust coats the carburetors …

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… Only the paint that has penetrated the rust is removed from the seat locking pin, but not the rust itself.

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Buying a dry ice blasting device is hardly worthwhile for the garage at home. This is mainly due to the high prices for these devices. The Cube 12/2 Plus from Sudstrahl GmbH used here costs, for example, 9800 euros (plus VAT).

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Burned-in heel: Without damaging the paint …

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… the rubber heel burned into the exhaust could not have been removed by hand.

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Blasting with dry ice.

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Blasting with dry ice.

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Blasting with dry ice.

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Blasting with dry ice.

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Rusty spots: The only minimal abrasive effect is clearly visible here …

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Switches that are faded or discolored by dirt are typical of BMW fittings. The ice blasting also brings the original colors back here.

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… After blasting, the plastic shows a homogeneous black again.

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… It can be easily removed by blasting. Also on the back – without dismantling!

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Baked-on dirt: Dirty grease covers the clutch’s hard-to-reach release mechanism …

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… Blasting can also be used to clean such areas perfectly without damaging rubber parts.

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Baked-on dirt: The cardan could have been scrubbed using conventional means …

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… Despite the aggressive chemistry, it would have been guaranteed to have taken longer than the five minutes with the dry ice nozzle.

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Brake drive: One of the trickiest parts: Even with a lot of patience and the use of aggressive agents, the brake dust caked with grease and preservative oil can hardly be removed, …

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… especially on the webs. By means of rays, on the other hand, it works perfectly.

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Refreshing plastics: Softeners that evaporate have left milky streaks on the surface of the windshield …

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Blasting with dry ice.

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Clean the motorcycle with dry ice blasting

Clean the motorcycle with dry ice blasting
Spotlessly clean

Content of

As tough as chewing gum, dirt, grease and preservative oil stick to the motorcycle after decades. The sticky layer is difficult to remove by hand. It works better and faster with dry ice blasting.

Uli Holzwarth

02/05/2015

Actually, I can’t blame the first owner of the BMW R 65 LS used as a demonstration object in this article. Whenever he drove the BMW, it got all the required inspections on a regular basis. And before long downtimes – there were really a lot of them – he always sprayed them nicely with preservative oil. So rust didn’t stand a chance, only around the seat of the locking pin of the bench there is a light brownish bloom. Instead, the R 65 LS is now covered with an unsightly surface that gives the well-groomed boxer an ugly, rotten look.

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The annoying thing about it: After more than three decades, this dirty melange of oil, grease, road and brake dust adheres so thickly and tenaciously to the wheels and the coarse-pored surfaces of the entire drive train that it can be cleaned with conventional means (high-pressure cleaner, benzine, etc.) extremely tedious and time-consuming endeavor. After several unsatisfactory attempts, I then had to admit to myself that you can do more useful things in your limited free time than scrubbing the sticky slush off the motorcycle inch by inch. So the BMW R 65 LS stayed the way it was for the time being: above hui, below ugh.

Dirt is blasted from the surface

And thus for Andreas Gschweng from the Sudstrahl company in nearby Tamm, the ideal demonstration object to convince us of dry ice blasting. To cut a long story short: The developer of the dry ice blasting machine succeeded in doing this in no time: After a good hour in the Sudstrahl hall, the ugly gray veil is history, the BMW R 65 LS shines like new again. Sorcery? Andreas Gschweng laughs: “No, the cleaning effect is based on the fact that the layer of dirt is locally supercooled by the minus 78.5 degrees cold dry ice pellets, so that it becomes brittle in the process. The approx. 0.3 millimeter measuring CO2 dry ice particles, which strike at almost the speed of sound, penetrate these cracks and sublime. This means that they immediately change into the gaseous state, with their volume increasing by 700 to 1000 times.

This blasts the dirt from the surface. ”That sounds pretty martial, but it isn’t. “Dry ice is relatively soft, even sensitive surfaces, such as electronic circuit boards, can be cleaned without damaging them,” he adds. Another advantage: No solvents or chemicals are required for cleaning, and there is no blasting agent or water left for disposal. Andreas Gschweng also emphasizes the environmental friendliness of this process: “Today, carbon dioxide is mainly a by-product, for example in ammonia production or other combustion processes; it is no longer produced separately in industrialized countries.”

Hardly suitable for private use

Nevertheless, with all its advantages, dry ice blasting is hardly suitable for private use in the garage at home. On the one hand, because the dry ice blasting machines are expensive. On the other hand, because they need the support of very powerful compressors that should guarantee an air throughput of 500 to 1000 liters per minute at a constant pressure of six to eight bar – which is accompanied by a lot of noise. Added to this is the sometimes laborious procurement of dry ice pellets and their limited shelf life.

In the yellow pages, however, companies offer this service. Because cleaning with dry ice has not only proven itself in industry, but also in the restoration of classic cars or the preparation of car interiors. The photos here only show the convincing result. But not how easily and quickly it can be used to clean hard-to-reach areas and to freshen up sensitive plastics.

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More information about dry ice blasting

Bilski

Andreas Gschweng feeds the blasting machine with the CO2 pellets cooled to minus 78.5 degrees.

Requirements, costs, providers

Buying a dry ice blasting device is hardly worthwhile for the garage at home. This is mainly due to the high prices for these devices. For example, the Cube 12/2 Plus from Sudstrahl GmbH used here costs 9800 euros (plus VAT). Added to this are the acquisition costs for a high-performance compressor and the procurement of the CO2 pellets, which have a limited shelf life (e.g. from Linde AG), of which around 20 kilograms are required to completely clean a motorcycle.

More information at www.suedstrahl.de

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