Dry Ice Blasting for Cleaning Your Vintage Car

 

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.

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