So
I would like to strip body of car down...
Have taken a prior car to the shop, to use walnut shells
Would like to do this on my own
I DO NOT have a large compressor...most I have is the portable 110volt that I can carry around to do home construction repairs etc

a)Will "that size(sorry, don't know how many gallons off hand, bigger than a breadbox, I'd guess 5 gallons?) do the job..I appreciate that the smaller the compressor, the longer the job takes

b)where would I buy the soda attachments...and what kind

Duh...pretty vague/uneducated/uninformed question...
Thx
Paul

Nope. Won’t even get the soda out of the hopper.

I just posted my experience so far DIY media blasting my chassis on my build thread: http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?s=&...t&p=2632003

This isn't soda blasting but even using a 5HP 60 gal. compressor that makes 14.6 scfm @ 40 psi is slow going and messy. Soda blasting wouldn't be as messy but I doubt it is any faster. You'll need a much bigger compressor for sure, but not cost effective if that's the only thing you need a large compressor for.

You will definitely need a bigger compressor. I got one on Craigslist. It's a 33 gallon and it's barely big enough for sand blasting. I didn't do a whole car, just parts. I would suggest you invest in a bigger compressor. You can use it for other air tools, like sanders, die grinders and paint sprayers.
It makes a huge mess by the way. I blasted into a box and put the media back in the hopper. You're doing a whole car, so maybe figure out a way to contain the soda.

If you really want to blast your car, you will need to rent a portable compressor with some real power behind it. I’m not fluent in compressor specs but the rental people will know what you need. You also need a real blast setup and probably about 20-50lb bags of soda. Price it all out and you will se that’s it’s the same price of less to hire it out. There are mobile blasters that come to you. Plan on spending $1,200-1500 to get it done. DIY will probably be more.

Ben/MB911 did his whole car with a grinder and abrasive wheels. That’s probably the most economical DIY.

100%. Best to hire out. I have a 60 gal pushing 10 CFM and it woudl take forever to blast a whole car. Maybe try one of the dustless blasting "franchises" popping up. The process seems fast and economical. Here's a vid...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx4SQfhWink

Serious compressor needed for that,the media is not very abrasive but the pressure delivered is the secret,get all setup and hire a compressor engine powered compressor unit and make it big off hand thinking 40-50 cfm.
As an example my 12 cfm single phase(240 volt) is sadly lacking on sand or foundry slag/grit,works but takes for ever....
Good luck.

best idea - just hire it done after you strip out all the soft parts & glass & have a body shell left

https://www.pittsburghsprayequip.com/2017/0...ting-pros-cons/

http://www.graco.com/us/en/products/surfac...-is-a-myth.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=Dustless+Bl...ent=firefox-b-1


circa 1977 - i did my car the hard way with chemical stripping followed by gentler mechancal sanding - anyway you do it is a mess

- catalyzed aircraft stripper works best if you can still get it - which maybe you can still buy in Canada (tho it eats fiberglass & bondo etc as well) - even then it is a multi-step process cuz it does not uniformly "eat" all layers at same time

mechanical methods suggested above are time sinks especially if you have multi-layers of repaint to deal with & is very hard to do well on curves & depressions meaning you'll have a lot of "filling" work to do afterward)

- even then, good air sanders & DA's require a hefty compressor & our old school 7" electric grinder-sanders like Souix & B&D with coarse grit discs will cut into the surface

i chem-stripped a Corvair Corsa back in the late '60s, but in those days GM oem paint was lacquer & you could use DuPont lacquer removing solvent that dissolved the surface paint & left the under-coat oem primer intact - (a relative "piece-of-cake" resto project it was)

iirc the lacquer solvent would also work on repaint enamel which is softer than oem baked, but have not seen it available for a long time

I like plastic media blasting. Doesn't get the car wet and unlike soda, doesn't need to be rinsed off and neutralized (get bare metal wet). Downside is like most of the other methods, it's not diy.

If you can't find a blaster near you, look up commercial powdercoating and ask if they do plastic media blasting.

Thanks for the replies
Understood...better to hire
The underlying problem is "trust" re the person being hired. Some years ago I took a teener with almost no rust to be media blasted....to a company that is in the specific business of blasting cars

It came back with grossly warped front and rear deck lids, and warped doors.
Fortunately, I happened to have a parts car that had almost perfect replacements, but I hated swapping out the original pieces.

I gather soda blasting may not be as critical as media blasting (if I recall, it was walnut shell)...but I would have preferred some control over this process

Thanks, you basically confirmed my gut feeling...I just hoped I could get away with a much slowed up process

I agree. Many blasting companies do heavy gauge American car bodies and are not familiar with lightweight steel. Though I have never measured, I was told the bodywork on 914’s are even thinner steel than standard 911’s of the same time period.

You have redistrip in your neighbourhood. http://redi-strip.com/

Not cheap but the best.

You aren't going to soda blast a car at home with a 110v compressor.

I'd shop around for a portable service that will come and do it for you. The newest best method uses dry ice pellets, which evaporate and leaves only residual paint. It's also the most enviro friendly. Its a newer process though and unless you're in a major metro you might not find a mobile service.

The compressor you'd need to do soda blasting would have to be rented, like the kind they use for a pneumatic jack hammer. The "consumer" rental units are a V8 engine with a special cam that allows it to run on 4 cylinders, and uses the other 4 cyl to pump air. The commercial (like Sullair) have an engine that drives a scroll type compressor and cost a lot.

That is caused by a untrained operator,a good skilled guy will blast to a thickness of steel he is working with and not work on one area for too long,and in some cases they use a less aggressive media ,there are downsides to what ever method is used.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through DIY blasting my fully stripped, on a rotisserie chassis and far enough along I can make some pretty good estimates of time and cost to complete the project. On my project, I replace the full floor, both outer longs, right inner wheel house, both lock pillars and sail panels which reduced the surface area to blast, BUT this also includes blasting inside the center tunnel, longs, sail panels, and other internal members as they became available to blast and primer. Also, I will chemical or mechanically strip the outer skins of fenders, quarters, trunk lids, and doors as those are pretty easy to do. I may change my mind if I have media left but that's the plan at the moment. So here's where it looks like it will pencil out.

Media - $213 This includes 9 50# bags of crushed glass and 3 50# bags of coal slag. Crushed glass is $21/bag at my local lumber yard; coal slag is $8/bag but nearest source is 150 miles away. Both leave a really nice finish that is comparable to DA with 80 grit so nice tooth for spraying primer. Both can be recycled which I am doing to save substantially on media cost but the coal slag shatters more in use so can't be recycled as many times. It also seems more dusty.

Blaster - HF 40# unit. $80 with coupon. I would have bought this anyway as it is great for small jobs. It is undersized for large jobs like a whole chassis but it just becomes the old "how do you eat an elephant (or whale)" problem.

Compressor - 60 gal. 14.6 cfm@40 lbs. I paid about $400 for it but for other things than blasting. I don't count this toward the cost of blasting but it is a necessary item.

Hood - Let's call it $55 because I bought a POS at HF that was worthless before buying a barely adequate one for $35. Doing it over, I'd probably budget $100 for a hood.

Dust masks - $20

Deadman valve and nozzles - $25 Deadman is optional but sure helps. I could have gotten through the project with the nozzles that cam with the blaster had they not fallen on the shop floor and gotten stepped on.

The grand total will be about $400 which is a substantial savings in coin over hiring the job out. I'm told a local shop will do a delivered rotisserie chassis for about $800 so that's $400 to put elsewhere in the project. Of course if I didn't have a compressor, that cost would blow the savings. I'm paying the difference in time, sweat, and mess. Rough estimate is about 20 hours spent blasting or recycling media and those are hot, dusty hours. Also note that soda blasting would be a non starter because of media costs. A quick check turns up $40/50# bag and you can't reuse soda. Figure 20 bags which would total $800 which already would put me over what the local pros would charge.

So yes, you can save $ DIY blasting but you will pay for it in other ways. For me, saving those greenbacks is a priority and I'm willing to take whatever time is needed to get the job done with least expense. It's about the journey. But if there was one part of this project I would splurge and "pay the guy" to do, blasting would be it.