Went by our local vintage car restoration place and nearly fell over…they were repainting an elan sprint coupe just like mine…I stopped and inquired about it and the fellow doing the job said he had stripped the paint down using soda ash. Im not that familiar with paint removal but had not heard of that before…
question…has anyone had this done and is it prefferable on fiberglas?..
Thanks, david
72 elan sprint coupe
I haven’t heard of soda ash, but soda blasting is popular using bicarbonate of soda under low pressure.
It was developed for the aircraft and boat application, where the substrate can’t be damaged by blasting. I’ve seen it used on a Type 14 Elite…the paint comes off layer by layer in a very controlled fashion. The end result can be wiped off and put into primer straight away. No risk of loosing the body shape or lines as with orbital sanders, no damage to gel coat from scrapeing paint off and no contamination from paint stripper. I can’t see a downside.
Got to be the way to go!
Mark
Mark,
Yes its soda blasting…maybe I added the ash…anyhow the finish was beautiful, smooth and the primer went on perfect…Why would others methods like scraping be used?..it must be more time effecient
david
Over here it’s about ?1000 per car to do and takes about 6 hours, and most folks seem to think it can only be done on a bare shell. In fact, it won’t touch glass, and polishes chrome! ?1000 translates to about 30 - 50 hours labour, and as it takes 60 - 100 hours to completely strip an Elan, seems pretty good value.
I’m looking to buy a set of kit for doing this currently, as I have a few Elans that need paint…some badly. It needs a huge compressor, bigger that single phase will power, and the mobile guys use the diesel engine jobs…hopefully will be trying it for real soon…I’ll keep you posted.
Whilst I have a couple of bare shells to do, I’m hoping that with a lot of masking, I can do a drive in - strip paint - drive-out-to-get-painted job on a couple. Should speed up the painting turnaround. Of course, the gel coat cracks will still need to be attended to, and all the chrome bits, badges etc would need to be removed first. But then I figure once blasted, the glass can be taken out and the small edges finshed by hand. I still don’t know any gismos or magic primer that sorts out gel coat cracks yet!
Mark
Once upon a time,
back in the early 70’s, a mate resprayed a Mk14 Elite for me.
He used a very elastic filler (beige colour) & told me he’d use it only if I did the initial sanding.
I soon found out why; it cured with a very sticky skin which fouled the sandpaper very quickly & he wasn’t prepared to waste loads of orbital sander disks on the job. Lots of elbow grease on my behalf
The cracks didn’t reappear
Now what was the name of that stuff?
Attack of “old fart syndrome”
John
This method of stripping paint is well suited to fibreglass cars and is common in the boat industry, many years ago a South Auckland firm which offered this service had magazine advertisments that featured a +2 body in them, this of course attracted my interest, the sales pitch was that you could drive your car in with everything intact, glass chrome and have paint removed then mask up and spray . I have head it said from people who have removed the paint the old way that if they did it again then it would be by the dry stripping method due to the time taken.
There’s another hidden advantage, Mark. If you take a car completely stripped to the painters, he’ll fit you in quickly. The job they all hate doing is the stripping, especially all the nooks and crannies. Give them a nice clean shell, even if it needs a few repairs and gelcoat cracks sorting, and they’ll bump the job than needs all the stripping in favour of your car.
And you’re looking at reducing the charge by the bodyshop by 50% ish as well.
Mark
Eastwood has a portable rig on sale for $342.00. With the 3/32" nozzle needs 12 cfm @ 80psi. It might take a bit longer but it beats rewiring the shop for 3phase!
I emailed this firm - soda-blast.co.uk/ - they said cost to strip an Elan down to the primer or gelcoat would be ?650 to ?750. Hoping to have my Elan resprayed in the autumn - the soda blasting sound a lot easier than hors with the wet and dry sandpaper. Apparently it does make a mess if you have it done at home!
Richard
Hi Richard
I am curious as to what this strip job quote includes, Door jams bumper recesses, engine bay. How many coats of paint is the quote for, one or seven. Every car is different, there is no right way or blanket statement that works. Elans with lots of paint and stress crack are different from one that need accident repair work.
The attached photos is what I would call a strip job, It was done with 180 grit wet sandpaper. It is not quite complete in the photos, there is still some factory pink primer on it but it all came off. It takes about two weeks to do working 2 or 4 hours a day (4 hours the first couple of days, 2 hours after that, your fingers bleed easy after the first couple of days so you cant sand too long). This was a single layer of factory paint so more coats of paint is more time. The finished product is the last photo. You can see more photos in the for sale section
Gary
It doesn?t necessarily take 3 times longer to take off 3 layers of paint than 1 layer, because the process has 2 variables. One is the pressure coming out of the blast nozzle, which can be varied from 20psi to 120 psi. The other is the amount of soda that is coming out of the nozzle. At one extreme is the cleaning of a building. If you have a large enough compressor (and these guys are talking about 220 cfm(!) for the big ones) and the substrate is stable, several layers of paint or grime can be blasted very quickly with a 12 inch spread of blast at full pressure with full media delivery… At the other extreme, if removing graffiti from a 500 year old building, with delicate lime mortar, then they use 20psi with minimum media delivery and a half inch spread of blast.
Generally for fibreglass, about 60 psi is used with a 2 inch spread so that the different layers can be revealed gradually and the stripping process controlled. But if the operator knows that there are 8 layers to get through, he can quickly get the first few off, then with a little more precision, time and care, take of the last couple of layers on reduced pressure and media delivery… They would also use reduced pressure around heavily cracked fibreglass, as high pressure could flex the panel and make the cracking worse.
Blasting the engine bay for an Elan would produce factory finish results. Not only does the soda break down oils, but it also just removes JUST the paint from the ?matting? finish in the bay, especially under the bonnet. You don?t end up with smooth glossy finish in the engine bay, as seen on most horribly over-restored Elans, but the finish that it left the factory with. Great for us originality nuts.
So you don?t end up with bleeding fingers, Gary! But there are downsides to doing it at home. Firstly you would end up deaf after 6 hours if ear defenders weren?t used?it is very, very noisy. If you have less than understanding neighbours, I would take the shell somewhere to be done rather than have it done at home. Imagine a diesel engine flat out for 6 hours, combined with the roar of a jet engine about 500 yards away?that sort of noise.
Secondly, it takes a couple of hundred pounds (weight) of soda to strip a car. In a city, when cleaning up buildings, it?s not a problem, as the soda cleans the waste water system by de-greasing it at it gets flushed away. Stripping a car results in a soda and paint dust mix, which would probably be less welcome by the water company. At home the dust must be contained, as in such quantities it would kill of most of your (and your neighbours) garden, and everything living in a pond.
I did the deal yesterday to get my kit?so now I have to convert an old barn into a hermetically sealed sound proof box!
Mark
“And we continue now with Psalm number 32”
Nah dead interesting Mark, honest!
Where’s that Barn?
John
So what will your price be for my Plus two shell with 7 or 8 coats of paint on it?
Hi Mark
For about $40 in sand paper and a little hot water with a little dish washing detergent its a lot less expensive. Multi layers are another story, a chissel is a wonderful tool for that. I have had plastic media blasting done to one of my Elan’s it was around $500 back in the early 90’s and the beads kept rolling around, you could not blow or vacuum them all out, they just kept appearing. I understand that the soda blasting media is water soluable and that makes a big difference. I have tried most methods and I still come back to the bloody finger method, I guess its pretty peaceful, and I don’t like listining to my 80 gallon compressor wine on for hours. I guess for a body on paint job it may be the way to go but every and all of my Elans needs so much more than a blow and go paint job, I would rather spend the aditional money on other aspects of the restoration. I guess I would summerize paint removal in one line, There is no cheap and easy way, each and every method has some draw backs…
Gary
I’ll convert you yet, Gary. Have a look at the videos here…especially blasting the Corvette.
soda-blast.com/soda_cob_blas … _video.htm
Mark
Hi Mark
I tried to look at the “blasting the Corvette” video, downloaded 2 megagytes of data and all I got was a black/blank screen with the box on the bar moving across and the time incrementing from 0 sec to 2:51. Not a convert yet, maybe Windows 98 is no longer a supported Operating System or it didn’t like my dial up modem…
Gary
Gary - I only exchanged brief emails with the soda blast company so do not know exactly what they would do - but it does sound as though one could almost drive in, have the paint removed and drive home paintless! I shall have to see how I am feeling in the autumn - perhaps therapeutic use of the wet and dry might make those winter evenings go by quicker.
Mark
Interesting video - fortunately none of my family caught me watching the soda blasting to music - although I am sure it it is perfectly legal to watch [the music was a bit dodgy!!]
Richard
This one’s even more cheesy…turn the volume up and count how long it takes for your missus to come and see what you’re up to.
Now I really must focus on something…anything…else.
sodablasting.com/
Mark
sodablasting.com/ Didn’t realise soda blasting could be so exciting!!
Richard
I have a body shop in the DFW area as well as own 2 Loti (Elan +2 & Europa Special). On a recent repaint of a 1966 Mercury Montclair for one of our customers we used a soda blaster and the results on metal were excellent. The process did in fact polish the bright metal trim. We left a few pieces on because repair was costly and replacements were difficult.
The body was left nice and clean ready for primer. Not that this is a concern with fiberglass bodied cars, soda blasting is not agressive enough to remove rust so if you are thinking beyond the body looking to clean up some of your metal Lotus parts try another stripping process.
Ed Demas