Camshaft oil feed

[B11sey]

Does anyone know how to remove/ replace the blank plugs at the ends of the camshaft oil feed channel on a 500 K0? I want to vapour blast but not confident about cleaning after unless I remove these plugs

[Sesman]

Drill it, tap it, put a bolt in and slide hammer. It worked for me,  but don’t do that until somebody more authoritative comes along.

[B11sey]

Thanks @Sesman. I was hoping to do that but how easy is it to re-seal. Is the plug just pressed and peened or is there a seal in front of it?

[Sesman]

Just an aluminium blank pressed in.

[B11sey]

Really useful info. We used the same method with copper to seal cooling circuits on mould tools but peened them really hard to create a seal. Hope I can get the aluminium to seal a bit easier 😅

[Sesman]

My mate machined a slight taper for about a third of the blank to ease pressing in. The blank was cold and the head warm.

[B11sey]

Sounds like a good plan 👍

[Oddjob]

Why risk it. I've bead blasted loads of heads and never done anything except blow air through the holes. If you're really worried get some solid copper wire from twin and earth electrical cable and just poke it down there. The hole from the bottom to the top is a straight hole, you can see if there's anything in there, the angled one use a copper wire or a very thin bottle type brush for carbs and you'll be fine.

If the head is degreased well beforehand it helps as the beads/grit in the media stick to the oil residue, no residue no stick.

Did you find anything in there Phil? Even with the bung removed the hole is bent where it goes up to the camshaft journal, so how do you know you've scoured that bend? You can overthink these things.

[Sesman]

Nope, it was a clean as a whistle. To be fair I’d blocked the holes with dowels and some wax. I didn’t know at the time about those rubber plugs the blasters use. I dried it throughly, blew it out with compressed air, then blew hi pressure water/detergent through it then repeat. I made sure that the head was dry by storing in the airing cupboard for 24 hours each time. I also did a little probing as you have described. I took the bungs out as I’d read somewhere about the risks of leaving unwanted medium in there. TBH, if I ever do another SOHC I’d just go for the bung, block and clean process.