I am considering sandblasting my drives and planes. has anyone ever done this personally, I do not want to pit any of the surfaces also I do not want sand getting inside my drives. anyone have any suggestions?

How about using plastic bead media. There is a shop here that uses it and says there is no deteriation of the metal surface at all.

Ive blasted K-planes before and let me tell ya....never again!!! That baked on paint they use is a MOFO!!! You cant use any strippers on it cause it may seap into the metal and resurface in the overn if you are having then powdercoated again. It will bubble the powdercoating! As for pitting......the surface metal of the k-planes is not smooth to begin with. Its somewhat an orange peel texture but smaller. The powdercoating or painting should fill all those imperfections.

As for drives....i cant help ya there. Ive never done that before. Ive painted over existing painted drives after feathering the edges together. Turned out ok....

I stripped my old drive using sand with no problems.

Thanks Wally. Those sandblasted K-planes painted up real nice!!!

Try a small part first, like the skeg. You might be surprised at how hard it is to get off. Only coarse black beauty got it off an old set of valve covers. Bead blasting did nothing. I have since added a nose cone and feather sanded the drive and painted with great results.

I had to have my lower torn down and cleaned out when I sandblasted it. I did the drive in two sections - upper & lower. I thought I had everything masked off sufficiently - wrong! Apparently some of the sand found its way into one of the oil passages. Just remember that this $h1t goes EVERYWHERE! You might be better off just pulling the guts out of it and blasting the bare housings. You could go ahead and inspect/reseal and be ahead of the game.

Thanks guys, Ime still not sure what ime going to do, I think that the drives have been painted recently(just bought the boat last fall) but after a major f#ck up by a careless marina this past weekend they need to be repainted, any recomendations on Paint, Primers ect. I will probably paint them red or black or a combination of the two.

My pleasure Forrest! LOL!!

Isn't it nice when some dumba$$ scratches your $hit and doesn't even seem to notice that you keep your $**** better than average???!!!

I've had good luck with PPG Concept paint and regular laquer primers. Imron is probably tougher though.