Media Blasting Questions

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PocketAces

PocketAces

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I'm finally finished with as much metal work as I can do before sending the car out for media blast. The plan is to deliver the car to them tomorrow morning.

A local shop is willing to blast my car for $800 using Copper Slag. Anyone heard of this media? Is it a good choice?

I think $800 is a good price. The job includes the body, doors, fenders, hood and trunk lid. The car is fully apart and mounted on a rotisserie. I have already removed all the undercoating, seam sealer and grease.

I'm also looking for advice on the hood and trunk hinges. They're still on the car. Should I leave them on for media blast or take them off and blast them separately? Are they hard to get off? If I take them off, when do I put them back on? After primer? After paint?

Finally there is some kind of sealer in the rain gutters. The car is a convertible so the only gutters are in the A pillars and they're wrapped in stainless/chrome trim. There are some cracks between the metal and whatever sealer is in the gutters. I'm not sure if I should worry about this. Do I remove all the sealer and start over, or should I leave it alone?
 
John! I should take of the trunk lid and the hinges. It's easier to mediablast. The looking clips can easily be removed with a metal tooth pick!

Re the sealer I should remove that too so you know what you start with. Such serious restoration will get a great result.
Keep the pictures coming. Subscribed.
 
IMO, I woud leave the trunk hinges in place and blast with car. The hood hinges I would remove and blast and prime then replace back on car. both sets of hinges were in place when car took primer bath. Both were painted on car when car was painted....
 
About the copper media I dont know. I do know that whatever media is used will contiue to fall out of the car for years to come. The shop can plug cavities like those tubular trunk hindges if they will. Good luck with it.
 
with the car on a rotisserie it will help to get the media out. i helped a buddy media blast a car on the rotisserie and we rotated it and blew it out with air best we could but that stuff just keeps coming. he ended up putting the shell still on the rotisserie onto the trailer and rotated it upside down and drove it around town for a few miles and it shook pretty much all of it out.
 
I have used several types of blasting , from Soda , sand and garnet . Most important is that the company doing the job is competent . Blasting creates heat, heat creates metal distortion especially on large flat panels , like hoods roofs etc .My 68 Dart hood was destroyed by an incompetent company. Soda is least aggressive but wont remove rust or filler and is a ***** to get rid of .Best results i have found was garnet and a good operator .Have a look at other jobs this shop has done .8)
 
The guy with the $800 price didn't work out.

The place was packed full of half finished restoration projects that had been in there for years. He claimed to specialize in powder coating, but I saw a gallon of black rustoleum on the work bench. There was a nasty looking truck frame with a fresh coat of black paint over all manner of rough scale.

Over the phone he told me he had a room for blasting vehicles. When I was there in person, I asked him where it was and he pointed to a door. I snuck over and looked inside and it was full of crap and not anywhere near big enough to hold a car.

After I caught him in the lie, he got pissy with me. How dare I question his expertise and years of experience. Then he told me I should go elsewhere.

I think I dodged a bullet.
 
I wound up taking the car to National Sandblasting in Los Angeles. What a difference. This place is huge and they seem to really know their business. They'll be using a combination of plastic media for the large panels that are prone to warpage and star blast everywhere else.

I'll be paying $1200, but I slept well last night.

I did remove the hinges. Not hard and I think it was the right way to go.

I also scraped the filler out of one of the rain gutters where it had failed. It was tough to get out and the other side still looked perfect so I left that side alone.
 
National is a great place and every one there knows what there doing. It might be a little more, but soda cleans out really nice.
 
Sounds a lot better , the last time i saw people using slag they were blasting the side of a ship hull , good luck with it .
 
65DartGTConv said:
... The place was packed full of half finished restoration projects that had been in there for years. He claimed to specialize in powder coating, but I saw a gallon of black rustoleum on the work bench. There was a nasty looking truck frame with a fresh coat of black paint over all manner of rough scale. ...
Click to expand...

Ohhhhhhhhhh, nice!!! Just what my industry needs to stay credible. < eye roll >

Glad you found a better place to get it done GTConv. Keep us posted on the progress.
 
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