Virginia Classic Mustang Blog: November 2022

2022 GT350 Tour
©Virginia Classic Mustang Inc

The GT350 Tour began in 2015 as a small gathering of GT350s. As it remains today, it is an invited group of friends staying at a resort, eating great food, driving fantastic roads, and visiting cool places for a week. Only 13 cars participated in that first Tour.

Over the years, the GT350 Tour has grown in many ways...one being the number of cars. This year, we had a whooping 38 GT350s. That is quite a few GT350 Shelbys in one single place...perhaps the most that I have personally seen together at once, especially considering that 36 of the 38 were 1965 and 1966 models. Folks were invited from all over the country including California, Connecticut, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Tennessee, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Delaware, and Ohio. Oh, and we don't want to forget one from Canada also!

While this was our seventh Tour (2016 was skipped), it was the first Tour where a previous location was repeated. This year, the GT350 Tour returned to our 2019 location of The Big Cedar Lodge in Ridgeville, Missouri. The Ozarks provided a fantastic location for touring the great roads in the Arkansas/Missouri area.

The GT350 Tour certainly does not happen all by itself! Credit goes to the organizer, Lee Cross, who just does a tremendous job putting the event together. It is an all-year job with a whole lot of pieces, fueled totally by his passion for these great cars and even better friends.

2022 GT350 Tour
©Virginia Classic Mustang Inc

2022 GT350 Tour. 6S1732 at the Top of the Rock. Welcome to Paradise!
©Virginia Classic Mustang Inc

2022 GT350 Tour
©Virginia Classic Mustang Inc

This "before" shot shows the undercoating on the floor pan of this 1966 GT350 Shelby Mustang.

This "after" shot shows the original sealer with overspray on the floor pan of this 1966 GT350 Shelby Mustang after dry ice blasting.

What is dry ice blasting?

Most folks are familiar with sand blasting and glass beading. Over simplifying it, dry ice blasting is very similar, but dry ice is used as opposed to sand, glass, or another abrasive.

Dry ice blasting for collector cars?

Well, it's been around for a while, but fairly recently it has been applied to the collector car hobby. It seems that it sort of started with cars from the 1980s and '90s...cars with lower mileage. These cars just basically needed "cleaning up" on the underside. This process certainly does a great job at that.

Now, this dry ice blasting process is expanding out to some of the more vintage cars that we are more familiar with. I personally think this is due to the expanded interest in keeping certain aspects of the cars "original" and making them more like drivers than trailered show cars.

What it is and what it isn't.

It's a great process that will really clean the surface. One of the best aspects when applying it to the car hobby is that it will take off undercoating. While doing this, properly done, it will not disturb the original paint and many times, not even the factory markings underneath the undercoating.

It's not for every car though. It will not remove well-adhered or original paint. I will not remove rust.

So, it works best for a car that you want to just clean and keep a lot of those original areas intact.

Overall, that's the very stripped down and super simple explanation of the process. There is obviously a lot more to it, and I recommend consulting with a dry ice blaster in your area who you can consult with and see their work. Better yet, try to see a "hands on" demonstration.

In this post, we will just share some pictures provided to us by a friend and customer. This car is a rust free example of a 1966 GT350 Shelby Mustang. The owner wanted to reveal the original finishes that was still under a layer of undercoating. He was super happy with the results. This particular detailer is located in San Antonio, TX.

This "after" shot shows the original sealer with overspray on the floor pan of this 1966 GT350 Shelby Mustang after dry ice blasting.

You can see the progress here of the dry ice blasting as the undercoating is removed, but the original finish is not disturbed on this 1966 GT350 Shelby Mustang.

Dry ice blasting has removed the dirt and undercoating, but the original black overspray over the white body color overspray remains after dry ice blasting.

This "after" shot shows the original sealer with overspray on the floor pan of this 1966 GT350 Shelby Mustang after dry ice blasting.

Pages

Nov 11, 2022

2022 GT350 Tour Goes Back to the Ozarks

Nov 5, 2022

Dry Ice Blasting for Cleaning Your Vintage Car