Hi Fellas,

It seems soda blasting does the best job of stripping a shell. Anyone bought their own for personal use?

_________________
Zulu...

1967 mini Cooper S

I had a Soda Stream as a kid, does that count?

_________________

nah i dont have one personally. supposed to be the best however i do have a sand blaster. Not worth the hassle though. To much to clean up but works if its only a small area.

It'd debatable whether soda is the` best' method.
Soda blasting (then painting) has some problems, just like all the other paint stripping methods do. They are just `different' problems.

_________________
DrMini- 1970 wasaMatic 1360, Mk1S crank, 86.6HP (ATW) =~125 @ crank, 45 Dellorto (38 chokes), RE282 sprint cam, 1.5 rockers, 11.0:1 C/R.

Its great on soft surfaces such as Dulon, Aluminum.

Useless on 2 pak paint and heavy rust, Its really slow to do as well

You need a high volume gun and unit t o make it economical to do at home $$$$

I prefer to use a grit / garnat on bodies and soda on the more delicate stuff.

I have stripped two engine bays, carbs, sub frames, brake and clutch parts on numerous cars.

Make sure you have good eye wear, a proper hard mask and air filter

A good question to ask yourself is why am I stripping it?

Soda blasting is fine, speaking from experience with... a lot... of cars. It is important that you clean ALL the loose soda out afterwards, and that you still follow strict body prep. If you expect to get it straight back from the blasters and be able to paint it you will have poor results.

Soda will not remove bog or rust. Only paint (and funnily grease )

The rule of P's.
Piss Poor Preperation gives Piss Poor Performance.
Make sure you still blow the whole car out with an air gun (including all the hard to reach places and nooks and crannies), then scrub the whole car down with thinners then prepsol then key it with 240grit paper as per normal.

There are other media around besides soda these days that are equally effective, such as a fine plastic media, nut shell (though thats been out for a while), and fine aluminium oxide... I've only used garnet, soda and nut shell and I have no complaints about soda.

One extremely important thing with soda blasting is that it is done dry. When it first started becoming popular in Australia, a lot of shops were using water to settle the soda dust... this just washes soda slurry into places you can't reach to clean and, well, defeats the purpose of doing a bear metal respray to remove rust/body imperfections. Make sure you use a shop that has a proper dust extraction system in use.

Otherwise, its great, just remember body prep when you get it back.. and don't forget it only removes paint.