Sodablasting & Sandblasting

[Piper]

We had this going on the old board, but for you guys that have done either on your cars could you post up the pictures before and after?

[thebankerstoy]

Hello Piper,

As you might remember, I had the complete engine compartment and some of the front suspension parts soda blasted on my sons 1972 Dart Swinger back in 2005 during it's restoration, so I thought that I could share some "before", "during" and "after" pictures with you.

Richard

Here's the "before" pictures showing how it looked in 2002 when we purchased the car. As you can see, it was painted in a REALLY nasty flat black! :p The car is an original California and then Arizona car, so the only rust that we had to deal with inside of the engine compartment was underneath the battery tray where a battery had leaked at one time and that wasn't very bad either. The lack of any serious rust is why the soda blasting worked so well in our application, but for someone who does have rust issues, I'm not sure soda blasting would be the best way to go.

[thebankerstoy]

Here are some of the "during" pictures. You can see where the rust was in the battery tray area in the one picture. The soda blasting did not remove the rust as you can see, but it did a BEAUTIFUL job on all of the non rusted sheet metal!

Richard

[thebankerstoy]

And some "after" pictures. Quite a difference between the nasty flat black and the body color matching Top Banana Yellow huh?

Richard

[thebankerstoy]

And finally, some pictures of the completed engine compartment.

Richard

[Piper]

Richard, what did you do to clean or "neutralize" the residue left by the soda?

[thebankerstoy]

Richard, what did you do to clean or "neutralize" the residue left by the soda?

A careful bath and rinse first and then my painter did all of the normal paint prep work before he primed and painted the engine compartment and suspension parts. Back in 2005, it ran me $300.00 for all of the soda blasting work that was done and the company that did the work had a mobile unit that came to the body shop, so my sons Dart never left the body shop's property and my body man / painter was able to ok the work before the soda blasting company left the site. I was very pleased with the work and the way the job was accomplished.

Richard

[4264door]

The final product sure turned out nice!!!

[Piper]

This was a suggestion a fellow gave me today on a product that would clean/ prep the area

[ws27]

This was a suggestion a fellow gave me today on a product that would clean/ prep the area

I wish I had some of that when I painted the engine bay of the blue car. Silicone brake fluid is a bugger to remove. I wasted two whole days getting the paint to stick.