First Generation Firebird-L Mailing List ......................................................................... I don't think I am missing the point at all. "Won't effect rubberd" is an absurd arguement. You cannot restore a 40 year old automobile while leaving orginal rubber bits or chrome in place. Removing them is where you have to start. Sure, you won't damage rubber or glass with soda blasting. So what? You cannot restore one of these cars without removing the set glass and bringing the steel down to bare steel. You just won't. This is where these cars first rotted through. You won't restore a Firebird by skipping these important steps of disassembling the car and cleaning it down to bare steel everywhere. So, "won't hurt rubber" or won't hurt this or that is not a presuasive arguement. The Soda blasting may be gentle on the metal or rubber bits during the process. These parts are needing replacement anyway, so what have you saved? A car you wan't to "restore" for auction, soda will get the car under paint to last a season or two. For a car you value, you need to strip to bare metal properly and without leaving chemicals behind. Aluminum oxide does not leave active chemicals behind. Soda remains chemically active until the reaction is spent. Soda blasting leaves a fine dust like flour throught out the car and the seams that remains chemically active. Soda attracts moisture and causes moisture to cling to metal where you can't clean it. Sure, soda might be good on a panel where you have access to scrub it off. But these cars are full of hems, seams, pinch welds and nooks & cranies this soda dust can never be cleared out of. It all retains moisture. That is why a box of Arm and Hammer soda clumps when it sits. Worse yet, it is chemically reactive. This chemical activity will cause continued corrosion and then paint failure later on. If you have ever examined a paint failure, it begins at a breach in the finish. The rust crawls under the finish for great distances. It lifts paint as it travels beneath the paint. Worse yet, the finish traps moisture that accelerates the rotting process. The more I rotate my project on the rotisserie, the more media that drifts out. Imagine this is a chemically reactive flour that you can't vacuum out of seams and that doesn't drift out as you move the project but remains trapped in seams and hems to cause continued corrosion and rusting. You might as well spray your car with Ford Maverick remover spray. You don't see Chip Foose sending cars out for "soda blasting". This is not a suited process for restoration work. It is a process for folks rushing a car through "restoration", tractors, or for the "buy it now" jackson acution while not attending to the defects that cause these cars to rot out later on. Larry
--- On Wed, 7/23/08, stu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: stu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [FGF] Soda blasting To: "First Generation Firebird-L" <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 3:37 PM First Generation Firebird-L Mailing List ......................................................................... I think you are missing the point about soda blasting. It does not have those problems that other media has. You can leave glass in the car, it won't affect rubber, it won't get very hot and it's not heavy enough to warp metal in the manner you described. Stu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Submissions to Firebird-L: <[email protected]> Unsubscribe from Firebird-L: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Help: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/firebird/Firebird-L.html> Classifieds: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/ubb/> Owner Pictures: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/show/> Donations: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/store/cart.mv?999999> FGF Merchandise: <http://FirstGenFirebird.org/store>
