has anyone ever heard of this process to strip the paint from your car before painting it.., my nephew says it is a quick and easy way to strip a vette because it is non intrusive on the fiber glass..

 

NO media blasting, regardless of the media used is 100% safe and that includes soda.
Bottom line is simply the technician doing the blasting and his experience, especially with blasting Corvettes. It's very different than blasting a metal car and even different than blasting a fiberglass boat since boats have gel coat that corvettes don't.

Some people have used soda to strip their car and were succesful but others have had their fiberglass body severly damaged from it. Again, it mostly comes down to the experience and skill of the media blasting technican.

Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to take the risk of media blasting my cars. Within the last two years I've had both of my Corvettes painted and both were chemically stripped. It's the only method that I would have done but others peoples preferences vary on their stripping method.

 

so what would you say works best?

Coke or pepsi?

 

http://www.armex.com/

On the left side of the page click on "Applications"
Scroll down and click on "Marine"
Click on "Pleasure Craft"

Interesting write-up.

Chris B

There is a media specifically for blasting fiberglass substrate.

Composite Formula
Technical Data (pdf) Material Safety Data Sheet (pdf)

Utilizes our smallest sodium bicarbonate crystal with our premium moisture control system. For use on the most delicate substrates like graphite-epoxy or fiberglass to minimize the potential for damage and to provide a smooth surface finish.

 

I recently saw a C3 body that was soda blasted and destroyed.
It is now the subject of a lawsuit against the shop that soda blasted it.
The body is so bad that it cannot be salvaged by a local shop that has worked on Corvettes exclusively for 28 years in the same location. If this guy can't fix it, it must be real bad since he is experienced and owns several Corvettes in addition to owning his own Corvette body shop. He does much of the work himself and is being called as an expert witness for the plaintiff.

 

yep, that's exactly why I don't like media blasting. My painter has had to repair the bodies on a number of cars brought to him after being media blasted.

 

boats are NOT the same as a Corvette so can't be directly compared. Boats come with Gel coat over the fiberglass which is a very hard, tough surface. Unless your Corvette has has major body damage previously and the bodyshop decided to appy Gel coat on it after the repair your Corvette doesn't have Gelcoat as it was never used at the factory.
It's easier to mediablast a boat than it is a Corvette and not damage it.

That's the reason I mentioned earlier that a technican referencing fiberglass boats as "experience" with mediablasting fiberglass isn't relevent. If you want to mediablast a Corvette you better get a lot of references from that technican on the actual Corvettes he's done and than check with the owners of those particular cars first

 

DO NOT DO IT!!!!!!!! I went through this in March of this year. A very reputable guy in my area promised me he could media blast my 1980 with soda and strip it right down to the gelcoat. Guess what? There is no gelcoat on a 1980. I insisted I be there when he started, he wanted to start on the hood. I said lets try down on the bottom of the rear quarter, it blew right through 2 previous paint jobs and into the glass(SMC) and left a gouge in the fiberglass. I brought the car home and my wife and I stripped it with razor blades. When it's your car you tend to be more careful than some body shop person. Soda media blasting sucks for Corvettes. Period.

In the end my car turned out great. BTW Barry K warned me about this in a thread in Jan/Feb and I did'nt listen. But it did make me cautious. Thanks Barry. I almost let some guy ruin my 14,000 mile car.

 

it depends on the guys doing it big time, how experienced they are, how close they get, how much pressure, etc. I've seen a number of cars done at our shop including a '60 vette. They all came out fine. The problem I see with it is that soda goes everywhere. AND I maen EVERYWHERE no matter how much you think you taped up. Kind of makes a mess. I didn't do mine this way because I didn't have the car completely gutted. The guy with the 60 did.

 

Based on experience, I do not recommend soda blasting.

I tried to use a soda blaster on my '80 last summer. The results were not good. The paint seemed to be harder than the fiberglass so as soon as the soda would get through the paint, it would immediately start erroding into the fiberlass leaving a very undesirable finish. I stopped using the soda blaster after doing both doors. A LOT of priming and block sanding was required to salvage the doors.

The soda blaster worked fairly well on the urethane bumpers but would would still damage the surface if you moved too slowly.

However, it worked GREAT on steel bodied cars such as the '70 Mach 1 and '66 Galaxie 500 convertible that we did. Another bonus is that the soda will dissolve when washed with water so you don't have to worry about the powder blowing out of the various cracks and crevaces when spraying paint.

Perhaps an experienced soda blast operator could do a Vette without damage but I couldn't make it work.

80crabvette, sorry to hear that you found out the hard way. At least you stopped the job early. I posted my soda blast experience in hopes that you and others would avoid it.
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...highlight=soda

 

Thanks guys ,there will be NO soda in or on my car....I am going to print your responses so my nephew can read the experience of others much more wiser then he is..

 

Yea, I should have listen to you guys, damage was very minimal, only small area on rear quarter. This guy said he did several corvettes each year, but they were all older and were painted with lacquer and had gelcoat under ,which I understand is hard enough to protect the fiberglass. 5 minutes of soda blast and my car was very dusty, even on the interior and it was taped very well. So glad we got it stopped.

 

A whole car only takes about 80 razor blades...