What to do before you sandblast your car

[mikes68charger]

I'm restoring a GTX for a friend of mine. I restored my own charger but I did my sand blasting, painting and welding in the same place. The car is complete strip and I mean stripped. And its rusted bad, so bad I don't think its worth the $$$ to restore it when he has a almost complet GTX sitting right next to it. The rusty hull is a true GTX 4 speed RT and it was silver with a black top, but the car was his brothers who passed a way so it has sentimental worth.

My question is, The car needs to be  media blasted, but the trunk is all trash! DO I remove the trunk panel, wheel wheals, rear valance, rear quarter panels before I ship the car out to be blasted??? I know when I had all the peaces removed from my charger the rear of the car had a lot of movement. The car will have to be moved to the sandblasting shop, on a trailer. 


Also the car has no k frame, or rear suspension. So how would you move this car to a car trailer.   

Should I make my boy buy a portable sand blaster, remove the trunk panels, blast the frame while trunk gone, weld it in, cut of the quarters and replace all that metal and sand blast where needed. Then ship car to blaster to do complet car?

Thanks Guys

[hemi-hampton]

I would install a rear end, Then cut the 1/4 panels off, then ship to Blasters LEON.

[six-tee-nine]

Make your friend buy some steel tubes an weld together a rotisserie.
It'll be transportable if you support the body carefully when on a trailer so it can't bend.
And you'll be more than happy after the blasting to be able to weld in new trunk panels without laying under the car and stuff like that...

[AutoRust]

If you are doing that much metal work, why sandblast it? When its time to do the exterior refinishing, media blast it, then prep it for paint.
We do sandblasting here, and when we are doing a ton of metal work, its a waste to blast an area your cutting out.
Perhaps buy one of the small ones, then blast the seams where you will be welding. Get the new metal in, then you can transport it on a dolly or twirly jig,, and do whatever is needed.
I dont think its wise to media blast a car until your ready to do the bodywork asap.



Dave

[71butterbee]

If you are doing that much metal work, why sandblast it? When its time to do the exterior refinishing, media blast it, then prep it for paint.
We do sandblasting here, and when we are doing a ton of metal work, its a waste to blast an area your cutting out.
Perhaps buy one of the small ones, then blast the seams where you will be welding. Get the new metal in, then you can transport it on a dolly or twirly jig,, and do whatever is needed.
I dont think its wise to media blast a car until your ready to do the bodywork asap.



Dave

I agree completely! I didn't do it that way but I wish I had. The blasting bill will probably be cheaper too. They charge by the hour in most cases and you just eliminate the need to blast the repaired areas by fixing them first but if give the car to them with the rusty panels your going to just cut out the blaster will probably spend time blasting them no matter what you tell them. It happened to me that way! I told them don't bother with certain panels because im just going to cut those out but they spent time on them anyway.

[bill440rt]

I left the car a rolling shell, cut out all the crap I knew was trashed, then had the remains blasted. Got the shell back from the blasters clean, primed it. I then had a clean, primed shell to start welding new panels on. Made the job faster & cleaner to work with.

[AutoRust]

I left the car a rolling shell, cut out all the crap I knew was trashed, then had the remains blasted. Got the shell back from the blasters clean, primed it. I then had a clean, primed shell to start welding new panels on. Made the job faster & cleaner to work with.

Thats not a bad approach. Sometimes with these rusty old cars, you cut so much off it, theres not much left. That can make it a real challenge to move.
Either way, its all good

[Mike DC]

 
I say hack the worthless quarter skins off.  (Just roughly clear away the big areas of sheetmetal closing off the sides of the car, don't try to make the cuts final or anything.)  Once that is done, you can still leave the trunkfloors & stuff in place without really hurting the blaster's access to the car's innards. 



And MAKE DOUBLE-DAMN SURE that you trust the blasting place to be careful about warping panels with the blasting heat.  Blasting outer skin panels with true sand is a bad idea.  They should definitely be using plastic media for the outer skin panels of the car. 

[StockMan]

Very good point Mike DC.  I have a friend that lost a pair of good 69' charger fenders at a blaster outfit.