74 Dart Sport Restoration

Lets talk paint stripping for this post. There are many different ways of accomplishing this. There is sand blasting, glass beads, plastic media, sodium bicarbonate, aluminum oxide, coal slag, crushed glass etc. Many of these kinds of media can be done wet or dry. Some of these "harder" media are hazardious as in using sand so wear a breathing mask and face shield or media blasting hood.

Then there is chemical stripping. I don't like chemicals because they are too hazardous, especially to skin so thats out.

With any kind of media blasting, the idea is that you don't want to harm the metal, warp it due to heat build up from the blasting process or high air pressure.

I have done soda blasting and I like the way it leaves the metal smooth and doesn't "etch" it like a more agressive media does. If you look at the MSDS sheets it is non harardous to the environment. It strips the paint off but it will not remove rust and has a real hard time with built up bondo. It leaves a coating of soda that can protect the metal from surface rust for a while. However the metal must be cleaned very very well before any painting. You don't have to remove all the glass and such as it will not etch the glass but it does get into every nook and crany.

For the inside of my hood there was some surface rust and some areas of heavy rust with some light pitting so I thought a more aggressive media was needed. I used Black Diamond which is a product sold at the local tractor supply store. There are mainly 3 categories of gits of this stuff. I used 30/60 grit which is classified as fine. I had my air pressure set on 90 psi and did not linger very long in one spot. It removed the built up paint very easily and removed the rust. It took me about 3.5 hours to do and cost me $37 for the 3 fifty pound bags. I have a large 60 gal 5hp 2 stage Ingersol Rand air compressor capable of 10 cfm sustained air pressure and air dryers in the air lines. If you have a small compressor you may not have enough pressure to do this kind of thing.

Next I used air pressure to blow out the hood to remove the left over media. Then I used soap and water and washed the hood 2 times. Then I used air pressure to dry the hood to aid in preventing surface rust from forming. I let it dry for a couple hours then applied an epoxy primer as the base. Next I'll coat it with a primer surfacer and wet sand it then apply the BC top coat.