Hi everyone, Been a while since I touched my project 88 camaro, but I am hoping in the next few weeks to seriously get back into it. It's been sitting in the garage for 2 years now, kinda sad. I've posted before, but basically I went through a lot of trouble of blasting the underside and wheelwells and tried to paint using rust-inhibiting paint only to find rust coming back right through the paint few months later. That was a bummer. I found a shop, Kwik Strip in Allentown, PA, 5 hours away from me that can dip the entire car and now I am seriously considering doing that. Does anyone have experience with this shop? or with similar shops? I have no idea what the process is or what to expect from this procedure. For starters, I have a frame right now sitting in my garage. Without suspension or wheels, how do I safely get it from my place to Allentown?

I did it several years ago to a 71 Chevelle. I had the body off the frame, and had it mounted to a dolly with big casters on it. It worked perfectly, but one thing I didn't count on was having to re apply seam sealer to the entire car. Other than that, and the hassle of getting some friends to get it on and off the trailer it worked great.

what you also have to keep in mind is that every last bit or paint will be gone. even in those almost impossible to reach areas. You need to make sure that you can get paint in all those little cracks and crevasses or rust will become an issue again.

If only they had a separate paint dipping tank of some kind.

I wonder if you can have an entire car anodized? that would be cool

I've heard good and bad, we restored a '76 Torino, and people told us to acid dip it, but a local Eastwoods dealer said to avoid it.. He had a few people come in and complain about the amount of work that had to be done after..
They make a really good paint stripper though, it's for planes. It comes in a 5 liter jug. It takes it paint, bondo, and primer off in one good swipe. Little bit more work to scrape off, but saves you having to move the whole car body..

dipping is bad, if you want it cleaned up get it blasted, not dipped.

my boss is in the process of restoring his old '70 Challenger, he was looking into having it dipped but opted to have it blasted because of the paint issue i eluded to earlier.

Yeah, just blast it.

Sorry guys, but I am not looking to make this thread another discussion on acid vs. blasting. I've read enough of these everywhere else and they always end up the same. Some people like one method, other people like a different method and nobody ever agrees.

I've already tried media blasting. I spent almost entire summer scrubbing undercoating and lying on my back under the car while blasting the floor pan not one foot away from my face. I went through at least 400 points of charcoal. Blasting works great if you just need to remove paint. The problem is that in areas where you have rust, pits and hard to reach places, I don't trust blasting. The reason I don't trust it is in my original post. After blasting, I've covered everything with Picklex 20 and then started painting some areas with Zero Rust. More info on these products. Imaging my disappointment when in the spring after 5 months or so I found rust coming back right through the fresh paint while the car sat the entire time in the garage. Somebody else mentioned inside of frame rails, well I looked there and what I see is factory coating peeling off and rust appearing even there. And for upstate NY I thought this car was in really good shape when I started working on it.

So now I am looking at alternatives, and see if I could get advice from people who have actually done acid dipping (whether good results or bad) and see if I could get tips on what to do and probably more importantly what not to do. Out of those who replied "blast it", did anyone try dipping? Why do you not like it?

I've done some homework on acid dips and those places are not all the same. Some just dip the car and it gets surface rust by the time you get it back home. Others use multiple pools to dip, neutralize and then put a protective coating on the metal. I will be calling Allentown, PA tomorrow to see exactly what they do.

Afterwards I was looking at something like this or this to get into as much of closed areas as I can.

Well, what we were told is that the acid, no matter how much they clean it, sticks in the low spots of the body, like areas you cannot get to easily. They can't get everywhere, so it just sticks around until it makes it's way through the steel.

Have you considered a more aggressive method of sandblasting? I use to work at a steel yard that did a little bit of sandblasting (which was always my job.) Their sandblaster was an industrial unit designed for heavy equipment (cranes/bulldozers/dump trucks) and the blasting media we used was always Black Beauty (which is very abrasive.) It had a twin screw compressor that was powered by a late 60's Detroit Diesel.

I wouldn't even think about hitting exterior sheet metal with it, but did several cars and trucks which still look great. Something like this may be better than acid dipping. How bad can a third gen be?

Look up user TRIGGER GTA.

"...what we were told is that the acid..." <-- this is the problem I am talking about. People are told by people who heard things from a guy who worked with a guy whose neighbor had a friend.... I am not saying acid dipping is awesome and I truly appreciate all advice I get on this board, but I want to hear from people who actually did it.

I also have a feeling that a lot of shops who do not recommend acid dipping happen to be the shops that offer media blasting or work very closely with media blasting shops. Is there not a conflict of interest there when they make recommendations?

IROC212, you had yours done. How much of a pain was the cleanup afterwards? you happy with results? anything bad come out of it?

RexKarr, when I said I bought 400 lbs of charcoal, the actual name of the product was Black Beauty. It looks, feels and tastes like charcoal though

CDN, thanks for the tip. I'll see if I can find TRIGGER GTA

I may be using the name black beauty incorrectly, but thats what we called it. Its more like a glass shard than a piece of charcoal. I did a 2nd gen Camaro body and subframe with around 150 lbs of then stuff shot out through that industrial unit.

I'm not saying that sandblasting is better than acid dipping, but I feel that comparing a car thats been acid dipped by the pros, to a car thats been sandblasted at home by a novice (maybe you've blasted a lot, but I didn't get that impression) is like comparing a car thats been acid dipped at home to a car thats been professionally blasted.

This is what I used:


While I agree with you that I can't compare myself with pro's that do this kind of stuff for a living, I found that most of the time if you have decent equipment and don't screw things up too much, you can get same results as a pro but it'll take you much, much longer the first time you do it. On the other hand, there is one thing people like you and me have that pros don't: love for the work in progress. I have all incentives to make sure I do a good job because in the end this is my car. Pro's incentive is to get paid as fast as possible. How do I know they will get to EVERYTHING and how do I know 5 months down the road, rust will not come back? In this case, I spent just about 2 months scraping and blasting. Maybe I am stupid, but I just do not see what a pro can do that I didn't do already when all that's involved is pointing and shooting (coal does not heat the surface at all, so no warping risk). Btw, after regular filter, I have 3-stage desicant air dryer filter so I know I wasn't blasting the car with water.

With acid, there is no operator factor, I know it will get to every bit. Plus acid dipping will leave the car with protective coating. Sand blasting will leave the car completely bare and I will have to race against time to get it painted.

On the other hand I called Kwik Strip(Allentown, PA) 5 times today and nobody is picking up the phone and there is no answering machine. For all I know that place doesn't even exist anymore. Anyone here anything about that place?

Thats the issue, I acid dipped a tailgate and then had it painted. A year later there was rust streaking from every crevice that they couldn't get paint to.

Also, look up blasting with dry ice. It's economical, clean, easy/no clean up.

I was very interested in the same thing you are.. also had the same responses.. Problem was that I couldn't find anywhere that actually did the dipping. I talked to TriggerGTA and saw all of his pictures and the car is awesome.. I still think it would be worth it if you can find a place to do it and have the time/patience to make sure all the hidden places are coated with something protective..

Let me know if you get in touch with that place in PA.

Cheers,
Richard.

Yeah I am still exploring all the options available to me. What I really want to avoid is another year of me scrubbing, scraping, sanding and blasting. So either get it dipped, or have someone else do those 4 things I mentioned. But again, if I do a shitty job, I go back and try to take care of it. If pro does a shitty job, he charges me full price for it and a year down the road I have to take care of it anyway.

I am also trying to find someone local with experience to stop by my place and maybe offer their advice. So far that's not going well either.

I was really glad when I didn't have to face this anymore every time I went into the garage.

In the mean time, this is what I found:
* Kwik Strip of Allentown, PA. (610) 437-7878
Shell - $1,200. fenders, doors, trunk are another $105 each
They bake, dip in hydrocholoric acid and then dip in neutralizer. Car gets several power washes. Last power wash is with zinc phosphate which will keep flash rust off the car for several weeks (they guy said some people left it sitting bare metal for 6 weeks without any rust coming back). You can paint/prime right on top of zinc phosphate and it will offer additional protection when under the primer

* Redi-Coat of Romulus, MI (734) 771-3190
Shell - $750. Each door $50, each fender $30
Same baking and dipping as above but last coat is oil which they spray on to keep moisture off unprotected surface. This oil must be completely removed before doing any body work or painting.
These guys also do e-coat, which is same process actual car manufacturers use. It electoplates (or something like that) epoxy primer to all surfaces, inside and out
Shell for strip with e-coat is $2600. Each door is another $115 (or something like that. when he said that, I was still sticker shocked from $2600 so wasn't paying attention)

Other places I haven't called yet:
* Redi Strip of Columbus (614) 475-0555

* Metal Strip of New England, Worcester, MA (don't know phone number)

* Pennsylvania Metal Cleaning of Monaca, PA. (don't know phone number)
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there should be another place near Toronto (which would be the closest location to me) but I can't get a hold of TRIGGER GTA and looks like he has not been on these boards for about half a year.

The only problem I had was in the trunk area, behind the wheelwells. Some old paint had accumulated in there, so I had to pressure wash it out. I didn't experience any surface rust afterwards, but there isn't any humidity here. The car was a solid no rust car, so there wasn't any new holes after getting it done. The reason I did it was the car had at least 3 layers of paint on it, and nothing was taking it off. 80 grit D/A slow, Aircraft srtipper would take off a little at a time, and get me stoned. The D/A would make the panels really hot, and I was afraid of warping them. I didn't want to have it blasted, and risk the media hanging around inside the car to get into the fresh paint. Everybody's opinion is different, but I was happy with the results.

Where did you have it done and how much did it cost?

Cheers,
Richard.

The Zinc phosphate is the key process to make sure anywhere does. Some places even Dip the complete shell instead of powder wash the finish seal coat for you. This way you dont have to worry about the hard to get spots.

TPI383, do actually know these places? I found one place which does 12-dip process after which the body is covered with etch primer, all for only $1000. Problem is that place is in New Zeland, kinda a long drive (then swim, then drive again).

I've contact all the places I've listed above:
* Metal Strip of New England, Worcester, MA -- these guys do not have an oven so they mostly work with older, non-urethane paints. I was told, they can take my car in and all the rust will be gun, but I will still have to remove the paint that they couldn't remove. Quote for frame only is $2000. At that point I didn't care much what protection they use after the process.

* Pennsylvania Metal Cleaning of Monaca, PA. -- quote for frame only is $2,500. They used to use zinc phosphate in the past but stopped because of problems with codes and EPA. Now they use some kind of "non-rusting" water (their words, not mine).

* Redi Strip of Columbus (614) 475-0555 -- I think these guys are out of business. Or they changed their phone number and decided to go stealth so customers can't annoy them anymore.

So original place is the only one I found that does zinc phosphate using power wash. None of the other ones even have that.