Glass beading?

[chickendreamer]

I have an oportunity to get my crankshaft and connecting rods glass-bead blasted. Is this worth it or just an old myth of producing power?

[MEDIK418]

All it will do is clean it real good and put lots of sand in the oil holes.

[jim_howard_pdx]

Some engineers swear that stress releaving metals makes them more resistant to damaging effects like cracked rods, cracked pistons, and cracked blocks or crankshafts.....

In the old days, forged pistons were determined necessary for blown applications. Forged pistons just went away on us. A forged piston is simply a cast blank that has been HAMMERED or SQUEEZED under pressure to collapse the grain structure of the metal into a tighter pattern.

We used to shot peen rods after polishing the beams to eliminate stress risers from the casting process. Even with forged rods, polishing the beams and shot peening seemed to work wonders.

Glass beading does not provide the same physical stress relieving qualities as shot peening, but soft parts cannot be shot peened, where they can be glass beaded. So glass bead the pistons if you want. Shot peen the rods. Glass bead the crank if you want.

Many engineers feel that cryogenically freezing the metal to minus 70 to 100 degrees celesius will also make stuff stronger.

Hope this helps.

I do shot peen all my racing rods, and bead blast the crank and pistons. Does it help, not sure, but it gives me a little more piece of mind.

Funny thing though, I seem to end up breaking stuff anyway.
I can break anything you can build. I promise you that! I baby my cars to death, then race them like they were disposables. Guess my desire to win, is greater than my need to baby stuff.