As a newbie with car gutted, engine out, floor replaced and stiffeners added [thanks CFR and Restoration Design], now I need to think about final cleanup. After reading William Harris's plans for baking soda blasting ,that sounds like the way to go. Many have offered varing opinions and I would like to find your opinions on pros and cons of each. Help please.

Acid takes everything... Heater tubes... everything. It is also nasty and toxic.

Blasting is much more controlled and better for planet.

I plan to have mine blasted.

Acid dipping is a better choice for a full time race car IMO, but it should be done before any rust repair or reinforcements. It will also strip paint from places that are impossible to access for recoating.
With the media strip you can skip some areas or just go over them lightly. There's no need to remove all the factory base coat IMO. Also I would prefer to leave some of the body sealer in places where it is still fully intact.

I am in the process of disassembly as well, the outer shell is pretty good, I need to fix some structural stuff and I was going to remove the undercoat but I heard that it is difficult to remove with blasting (it bounces off). Would I be better off doing under the car with chemical paint stripper?

do a search here on the board. this has been discussed in detail (with pictures) before.

i had my car blasted. liked it until i first drove it again.
it's been over 1 year now and i still have sand coming out of the cracks everywhere!

i have seen a few acid-dipped tubs by now and they look & feel like brand new out of the factory.
it's amazing how clean they are. yes, you need to get the heater-mufflers out of the longs first, but that also gives you the opportunity to fix & primer those from the inside.

in any case, if i had to do it again, acid would be the only way to go for me ...
Andy

I had mine dipped, other than the "holes" that seem to appear from no-where It came back really nice.

I used to work in warehouse and had huge acid tanks, we would used 3% acid for dipping. The thing is everything that came out of that acid had to rensed off with water. It was usually 5 to 10 min. before the surface rust would appear. I would imagine doing a 914 chassis would be the same, yes, no? not galvanized...

Plus do you really want to remove all the seam sealer form every weld on the car?

Never done either one, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about anyway...

-Mike D.

After it is acid dipped it is washed down and then dipped in a phosfate (sp?) bath that coats the metal and prevents flash rust from forming

Phoenix-MN is there someone near you that does the dipping? & rough idea of cost?

yupp, dipped in acid, neutralized in a second bath, then dryed and primed at the spot.
no flash rust.

before:








and after:










the two threads can be found here:

before: http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?act...f=2&t=2701&st=0
after: http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?act...f=2&t=4369&st=0

Andy

GWN7 -
It was many years ago that I did mine, it was a metal stripper in White Bear lake, MN (I'm not sure they are around anylonger). They stripped all the old paint, seamsealers, and then elecro-chemically/acid dipped the tub. The would attach an electrical wire to the tub (-) and another wire to the tank(+) and pass a controlled amout of current through the tank solution. This left it spotless of any rust and all bright and clean. I recall it was around $950.00 at the time.
Paul

Acid man!

You've never seen a primerd tub look so nice as it does after acid dipping.

Thanks Paul, gives me a place to start looking...no one up here does it. White Bear isn't that far for me.

YES YOU WANT ALL THE SEAM SEALER OFF!! Where do you think all the rust is hiding? Behind the seam sealer. If you don't want rust problems, acid dip. It's more work, but it is worlds better than media stripping. I don't care what media you use.

Question for the central florida guys. Are there any facilities to dip my car in the Central Fl. area ??

None that I'm aware of, but Paul or Rouser might be able to help.

I'm pretty sure that stripping, dipping, and priming costs around $3K on top of any paint and body work.

If we are talking 4 cylinder cars here, I think it's still way easier to buy a really nice 4 cylinder car without rust for $5-6K and then just have it repainted to your specs. I would only do stripping and dippinng on an original six or if you were desperately attached to your 4 cylinder VIN number.

IIRC $800 - $1000 around here for dipping and primer.

you have to strip it down yourself, but you want that anyways regardless of the method used.
Andy

Andy,

That dipped and primed chassis is a beauty. I remember the photos from the previous thread. Is the primer sprayed on or dipped?

While most of us would love to have a spotless car like that, I doubt mine will ever see a tank of acid. Sure is pretty though.

Not quite.

The dipping is at least $1k The primer afterwords is at least $1K. The price goes up from there based on varying options and how many pieces of car you bring them.

I know. I paid the bill.

You might be able to build a car that appears nice for $5-6k, but to build a car that is really, honestly well done takes $10k at least. Somewhere people got the mistaken impression that these are cheap cars.

Mark, I know these cars cost big bucks to bring back. I'm just saying that as an alternative to stripping and dipping a 4 cylinder car you could just start off with a chassis that doesn't need it.

It of course also depends on what kind of restoration you are trying to achieve.

I'm not trying to pick on you.