4x4 North

Just picked one up because it was on sale ($199) and I'm in the land of no PST.

Anything I should mod on it right out of the gate so it works better? I won't put it together until I get home, but I'll probably put polyurethane roof sealer on all the seams. And I'll scab in an LED light of some sort.

Also I'll have to stop being lazy and plumb in the desiccant dryer I have lying around. It's one of the big canister ones that takes several pounds of silica gel. I'm sure I'll get sick of having to dry the silica out in the oven, might have to do something different eventually.

I believe ive heard the glass is really prone to pitting even with guys not hitting the glass directly. Maybe a guy could put a 3m protective film on it? They might have changed them too that was prob a few years ago now

Johnny5 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 23, 2019 6:54 pm I believe ive heard the glass is really prone to pitting even with guys not hitting the glass directly. Maybe a guy could put a 3m protective film on it? They might have changed them too that was prob a few years ago now

It comes with tear offs (film things) and I bought an extra pack of them. It would depend a bit on what media you use too. I'm not sure if I'm going to run glass or sand, but leaning towards sand. I have some black oxide around that I use in my speed blaster every now and then, but it's too aggressive for most things.

Any thoughts on media? Put this thing together and went to see what they had for media. $100 a bag for aluminum oxide, seems a little spendy. Glass bead is cheaper, and there's copper slag as well. They had sand too, but the instructions specifically recommend against using it. Interestingly they had steel shot, so you could shot peen your own crap I guess???

I bought some recycled glass for $12 to try for now.

glass bead works pretty good in those things and is a cheaper option than slag or oxide. Sand works for a bit but turns in to dust pretty quick and makes it hard to see what youre blasting. that dust also causes silicosis so rather than just saying “ hey dumdums wear a mask when theres dust” they have to say “ this sandblasting sand is not for sandblasting (nudge nudge wink wink)”


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Actually the copper slag is only a little more expensive than the waste glass I bought. The glass bead is about 3X that price.

I think I'll avoid sand either way since it doesn't seem to perform well enough to be worth it at the small price difference when it comes in a bag. I guess the only reason it's used is you can buy it buy the truckload if you're running a massive volume operation, especially if it's outdoors so you're not recycling it at all.

So overall I think this thing was a good deal at $200.

I did mod it a bit right out of the gate like you have to do with most PA crap.

First, it's too short for a regular human. I like casters on stuff anyways, so I added some.







Sadly that's $100 worth of casters. I also was guessing a bit when I sized them, and I actually overshot and made it a little taller than I like. I may cut the legs down a bit, but since I welded the casters to the 3" angle I can't really switch them for something smaller easily. I'll use it some and decide though, it may be fine.

I added a LED light inside, which was a bit of a gongshow. The one they sell for it is some fluorescent POS for way way too much money. So I found a $12 light in the surplus section and modded it. There was a reason they had them in surplus, the connectors on it were so bad it didn't actually work out of the box.



Took it apart to mod the wiring, change how it mounts, and seal it up.




They put the switch on the side of the cabinet and it's stupid. I moved it. Oddly the cabinet comes with the switch when they sell their light separately? Light in action:



Added some chafe tape over the light too, we'll see how long it lasts:



There's a hole with a baffle in the back, I guess for dust collection? They include a plug which I installed for now. We'll see if I need dust collection.

As I said earlier I sealed it all with polyurethane caulk. They included rubber gaskets for some things, like the openings for the gloves, I did not use them as they looked like junk. The only place I used their seals was the foam tape type they had preapplied in some areas, and on the door and window. We'll see how it holds up.



The door latch and hardware is crap. I upsized some of the screws for the latch, but the part it attaches to is just held onto the door with tiny self tapping screws. The door is plastic. So I do not see this lasting long term.



The air fitting setup is also dumb, I changed it a bit from the bulkhead setup they had to just a female thread coupler with one washer on the back. The location is still stupid and I may move it.



Gun looks pretty crappy but it should work for a while.



Latch for the drain/dump on the bottom is trash and would not tighten the seal enough. I replaced it with a bolt for now.



Last thing is the screws for the window are annoyingly short. Otherwise they did a really good job of providing more or less enough hardware. If I take the window out, which I'm sure I will as replacing the tearoff is going to suck to do nicely otherwise, I will probably put rivnuts in instead as installing it sucked.



The gloves they provide are also pretty thin/cheap.

Anyways, overall it seems pretty decent for the price. I'm sure I'll have to do a few more things to it too.

You will be pretty pissed off if you dont run a vaccum on it i hook the shop vac up to mine for the odd time I use it. I think the hole in the back is meant to be an intake so the air keeps circulating.

Mr.gutsy wrote: ↑Wed Jan 22, 2020 11:25 am You will be pretty pissed off if you dont run a vaccum on it i hook the shop vac up to mine for the odd time I use it. I think the hole in the back is meant to be an intake so the air keeps circulating.

Yeah, I did some more research and that's the intake. The other hole I plugged is for the vacuum. I'm working on something for it.

This is what I came up with for dust collection. It's a bunch of recycled vacuum parts, ABS fittings, and an empty 5 gallon soap bucket. I also had the stupid little shop vac stuffed away in a closet in the house, which is a horribly flawed design so I never used it, but it should be okay for this.









I'll put some water in the bottom of the bucket, the hope is the bend the air has to take is hard enough to force most of the dust to settle. We'll see. I moved the outlet fitting because I thought it was stupid where they put it, and I actually added a baffle to the inside of the cabinet to cover it as apparently that helps a lot with not wasting media. I taped a rag over the inlet hole for now, I'm going to try to find some foam air filter material to put in it instead, as I think this will be too restrictive and it's just there to stop the odd bit of media from working its way out.

Haven't tried it yet so we'll see what happens at some point. Currently I don't have any parts I actually need to blast.

I dont think that bucket will work the way you have it set up. If you look at the old oil bathe air cleaners the air is drawn straight down and has to make a 180 right above oil so the heavy stuff slams right down. If you had the inlet go straight down and terminate an inch above the oil and have the outlet to the vac flush with the lid i think it should work better IMO

Mr.gutsy wrote: ↑Sat Feb 08, 2020 7:02 pm I dont think that bucket will work the way you have it set up. If you look at the old oil bathe air cleaners the air is drawn straight down and has to make a 180 right above oil so the heavy stuff slams right down. If you had the inlet go straight down and terminate an inch above the oil and have the outlet to the vac flush with the lid i think it should work better IMO

We'll see, I'm prepared to change it if it doesn't work. Originally I wasn't going to do it like that but had the wrong fittings. ABS is dirt cheap and easy to change though.

Update on this thing.

The factory gun is a total POS and after modding the fuck out of it I'm going to try a different one.

It also badly needs a second fine screen to prevent big flakes and whatever from getting into the media and plugging things.

Good to know haha shit eh