Soda Blasting

[230slhouston]

Hi,
I am in the midst of debating whether to start my paint job and contemplating options. Has anyone soda blasted their car? Will this damage the aluminum panels?
I am afraid if i ignore the surface rust it will be more work later. Have to balance finances as well as send a daughter of to college 
Going to be a long project for me, the car may be out of commission for two years.

Thanks

[Benz Dr.]

Yes, I have. I would NOT use it on aluminium panels for any reason. It will warp the $hit of everything - very bad news because then you will have to fix all of that. Use paint stripper on the soft panels only.

 Soda is just about as messy as sand. It gets into everything but it's OK if you spend a lot of time blowing out all the cavities. Media blasting is probably better but each has it's strong and weak points.
 Dry ice is the Cadillac of blasting. It leaves no residue at all and is great where you don't want sand getting into places where it would never come out or damage moving parts. 

[mdsalemi]

Dry ice is the Cadillac of blasting. It leaves no residue at all and is great where you don't want sand getting into places where it would never come out or damage moving parts. 

http://www.dryiceinfo.com/cleaning.htm

For those wanting to read up on the process, at the bottom of that web page are some of the equipment manufacturers.  They might be able to tell you who does the process in your area for those wanting to find it.

[stickandrudderman]

Soda blasting is fine as long as you are doing thw whole car as you'll need to thoroughly blow it out of everywhere and it'll take just as long as the blasting did, if not longer. Like all things, if you get an incompetent operarator then damage can be caused, but in the right hands it can give excellent results. It's used for stripping aeroplanes now too.