Any interest in dry ice cleaning of underbody?

[mnahon]

You might have noticed an earlier thread in which Roland was looking for a lift to use for doing dry ice cleaning of his Pagoda's underbody. I contacted him because I was similarly interested in cleaning mine.

We now think we may do this in June in southern NH, not too far from Boston. We'd like to know if anyone else is interested in doing this. Right now, the cost for the two cars is roughly $1500 each. It would drop if we had more cars, e.g. maybe to $1100 each with 4 cars.

Both Roland and I are looking to remove tar undercoating which is very hard to remove by hand; and hopefully still be left with the painted underbody (or whatever else might be lurking under there!!).

If anyone's interested, PM Roland (rbouch8828) and/or me to discuss details such as timing etc.

Thanks,

Meyer

[Bonnyboy]

If time if the $$ sucker could you do some mechanical tar removal first?

I used an electric oscillating scraping tool to remove loads of tar from under my car and along with rust which was fairly easy as the blade heated up and basically melted the tar that didn't pop right off. Most popped off.   I did that to give me a good working area to clean for wire wheel / welding and I expect that if you took some of the initial tar off first you may get your price down even more.   The oscillating tool didn't gouge the metal underneath that was solid - it decimated the rusty bits but they were getting replaced anyways.

[mnahon]

Hi Ian,

I've spent a few hours under the car so far---using a heat gun and a hand scraper. Maybe not the ideal tools; and got only a small fraction done. At the rate I'm going, the estimate mentioned by someone else of about 100 hrs to do the entire job seems in the right ballpark. Apart from the sheer time is the fact that it's pretty unpleasant work---I'm doing it lying on the ground. So between that and shelling out money, the latter is looking more attractive. In my younger, poorer days, I would've certainly taken the harder road.

In your case, how long did it take you to do it with the entire car?

Meyer

[450sl]

Hi Meyer ,

I have done my engine and enginecompartment.
All depends on the applied pressure  how fast it goes. my estimate an underbody should take around 4 hours.

Just be aware that costs depends on hours and the used amount of ice.
They have to estimate the amount of ice for a job and order this in advance . so you have to pay for the  leftover ices .( they melt away)

An other thing to be aware of , is to reduce the pressure on fragile parts as cables/plasticparts. Take your time on these parts.
Also put your car upon a large sheet of plastic to catch removed tar/dirt.

Then everything should workout great.

Mark

[mnahon]

Thanks for the advice Mark,

The estimate they've given us is for 2 hours per car. Does that sound to you like they plan to use a high pressure to make the job go faster? Personally, I'm keen to avoid any damage and hopefully have the underlying paint remain somewhat intact.

When you did your engine compartment, were you just removing dirt, or undercoating too? Did the process leave the paint unscathed?

Meyer

[Bonnyboy]

I didn't do the entire underbody - only about 2/3rd and it was a 4-5 hours over a few weeks.  I had car on a hoist though so it was easy peazy to get under there.  I was really only chasing rust - it was amazing what the PO did to hide the rust 25+ yrs ago but it all came to light when I went under there with a scraper.   

The dry ice sounds wonderful though.

[450sl]

Hi Meyer,

Dry ice only takes care of your loose paint , dirt grime tar etcetera , so dont expect it to remove your still sticky
paint and or original mb undercoating , it just gives a superclean surface.

You might consider removing things like exhaust heatshield fueltank  etc. things that hide parts of your underbody.

Afterwards you will be happy to see a very clean underbody, ready for your wirebrush-attack to take care of rustproblems.

Mark