bead blast sand substitute

I am restoring a 65 barracuda. I took it to a local high end auto restoration shop and had them soda blast it and put it in epoxy primer. If I had all the glass out, interior and drive train out, a complete inside, outside, and underside would have been about $1700. As it stands, the outside, inner fenders and trunkwell was $1000 soda blasted and epoxy primed. Dropped it off on Monday, picked it up on Friday. In my opinion, it was worth every penny!

Good point there as well.. I found a similar place 50 miles away or so from me that would chemical dip the car, blast it then "e-coat" (dip or powder-coat, I am not sure) for about 2K.

Personally I couldn't decide for like 2 months, but since I am doing major sheet-metal and structural modifications and the car would be in pieces for ever, I decided to buy the blasting equipment and will be doing it myself in stages for the same price (no dipping) but I will end up with a nice set of quality equipment to do future projects.