Technical Anybody know what these are?

Was cleaning bottom of intake and found 5 of these hard plastic beads , in the draft tube outlet, also some black stuff ( probably old oil) smeared on the inside that had what looked like grooves the same size as the balls. One pic shows 3 of the balls and the other pic shows the black . Are these large blasting or polishing. Beads?

 

probably tumble beads from the factory polishing job.

 

Thanks

 

There used to be a process named Extrude Hone that used a very thick black abrasive paste. This paste was pumped back and forth through chambers or tubes to smooth, polish, deburr, radius edges of both the interior and external surfaces. I think it was also used to improve and polish exterior surfaces. I know it was also used to port and polish intake manifolds. Don’t know if process used balls as shown but seem reasonable it might have.

 

balls are definitely from vibratory polishing system

 

That explains the black stuff , I was thinking it didnt smell like oil , Thanks for the education .

 

And they are more than likely ceramic rather than just plastic.

 

Or maybe a kid put them in there. I know I shot plastic darts into the gas tank of my dad’s ‘60 Valiant when I was 4 years old.

He put some darts in a jar of gas and when they didn’t dissolve he decided to leave the darts in the tank.

 

Too bad they're not seeds you could plant and grow a few more intakes.

 

I was going to ask you to further explain this statement.

But then I decided not to.