Curious how much professional shops charge to completely blast interior & exterior and prime a gutted 914's body ...

... and where did you go?

No 914’s but a bunch of 911’s. Usually around $2k for plastic bead blasting and primer.
This was from a large shop in SE PA that does a lot of blasting.

The problem with having them prime is if they don’t do a great job, you won’t know till later because the painter will just spray the whole car even if spots of undercoat or rust remain.

Not much to add as I've only had two 356's blasted and one dipped. Agree with Mark, have your painter prime the tub.

Blasting a 356 about 5 years ago was around $2k, dipping and phosphate coating was $9k.

Both 356's were done in Canada and from what I understand they don't do cars anymore.

I’m getting my 912 dipped and e-coated. It’s a 67 with metal heater tubes so it doesn’t have the same issues as the later cars with paper tubes.

I called around several local mobile blasters. The best quote I got was $800 for inside and outside of the bare shell of my 912. They come to me.

Tempting... eh.

Obviously doesn't include priming.

Seems cheap, careful the shop knows how to blast thin metal on cars. Could wind up with 100lbs of skim coat to smooth things out.

$1500. Complete top and bottom in my driveway. Baking soda or grit depending on area.
To get to primer from this stage was massive effort.
Hours of wire wheel and scotch pad and sandpaper work.
A proper rotisserie is manditory to remove many pounds of sand, soda and paint.
And a shop vacuum...or two.

Stock up on a few filters for the SV. Grit gets in to places you can't imagine.

I paid around $1500 for Dustless blasting to come do my entire car (minus the bottom of the floor pans). Did it dry since I had the space. Worth every penny! My garage was so much cleaner throughout the entire restoration.

Click to view attachment

This cost me $900 a few years back. A good acid etch primer can be shot onto it after it dried. They use an iron phosphate solution in the water to keep it from flash rusting. It's what is used as a pretreatment for powder coat.

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...amp;hl=Stripper

Yes on all that, @Mikey914! The Dustless guy said he prefers to do it "dry", if possible, which isn't really "dustless". They took about 7-8 hours to do my entire car and went slow to keep the heat down. I tell ya... I needed a counseling session at the end when they showed me just how BAD my car was. He said it was the second worst car they've ever seen (rust-wise). He said it was slightly better than the Karmann Ghia that they blasted for the Iron Resurrection show (see season 2, episode 7).

This one may give you a run for the money

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...Taylor%27s++wes

I'm a firm believer in the process. It's the only way to remove all the crap. Unfortunately you get to see what is really there.

@Mikey914 - I have reviewed your photos. My conclusion... Wow! That's an impressive amount of work and it looks like you had some good help. I think both our cars were in very bad "restorable" shape. Yours had more extensive issues in the front whereas mine was really bad in the middle-rear.

Looking back, I'm just amazed I was able to take something like this:

Click to view attachment

And rebuild it into that:

Click to view attachment

Cheers,
Fred

Dig the foam out above door handle indents and above taillights...

Fred,

Would you be interested in doing another? just kidding. Taking these rusting hulks and turning them around is half the fun. Probably 50 years ago I blasted a 356 speedster in a one car garage with silica sand, and live to talk about it.
BTW: Great looking work, keep it up

So did you fine one Mark?