media blasting like turning rotors must be done slowly to avoid damage.

an operator holding a tim the tool man blaster may have the devil whispering in his ear "push it to the max"...time is money.

having some stray sand particles hiding in rocker is small price to pay for having a crisp substrate for painting.

 

The hood and fenders are in the back of my pickup, took them off so they could reach everywhere with the blaster. The entire car came back perfectly clean. The pic was taken about an hour after the shop completed the blasting an hour later the car had epoxy primer on it.

They used plastic media first to get the paint off then did a second pass with an oxide just to give the primer something to bite into.

I have a blast cabinet for the smaller parts but in the end the rear end was the only other part I had to get ready for paint. Everything else either went or is going to scrap.

 

I was told this about soda blasting. The plastic they used on my car is big although its still everywhere. Took a while to get the rockers empty.

You find the right blaster that knows what he's doing and you won't have a problem. It all a matter of the right materials and the skill to get it done right. I wouldn't go to an "industrial" blast guy. They talk quite a bit about the process http://www.hyersandblasting.com/index.html

 

Sounds perfect.

 

Soda blasting wont warp the metal. My dads truck body and my hood have both been done. They did sand blast the frame of his truck afterward. Cost him about $700 for the whole truck and frame to be done.

 

I'm with BA, I've heard good things about soda blasting, in fact I saw a guy outside the other day on my street soda blasting what looked like the cab and fenders of a '50s truck. I'll have to get to know him better...

The only repercussion I've heard of is residue being left in pores in the metal that may cause problems with primer adhesion. But the solution is simply washing the car with soap water. How hard is that?

Either way, I'm media blasting the underside, engine bay, and fender aprons of my '68 coupe with my media blaster. The rest of my metal is being stripped by hand and sanders to prevent warping.

 

We washed them down and then sanded the metal to get good primer adhesion.

 

sanded metal is ok...my usual...what fun.

i'm not turned on by soda blasting because it does not leave a profiled substrate and won't tackle rust. it is nice in some cases.

 

Soda is small and gets everywhere but I won't argue whether soda or plastic is better. I was actually going to go Soda until one of our local restore shops recommended something else (anything else actually) because of the issues of getting all the dust out of the car. If its worse than plastic then it has to be bad, I spent hours blowing, vacuuming, flip the car upside down....repeat... media out of the rockers. I chose the route I went after a lot of research in media blasting. In addition to selecting the right media it important to select the right shop....probably more important than the media itself.

Hitting it with an oxide after blasting means you don't have to sand and everything, I do mean everything, is set for primer. I couldn't believe just how rough it left the metal. All I did was wash it down with with DX-330 and paint (body shop that did the blasting said it wasn't even necessary to degrease at that point. I did it anyway).

 

how hard will it be to sand blast or media blast the car ur self. i have lots of room. Cant u juts rent a sand blaseter