Interior undercoating removal.

[MusPuppis]

I did a search about getting this crap off and came up with some info about using an air chisel, which I do not have..

 

I also did a search for undercoating removal on the underside of the car and came up with some good info involving solvents and such.

 

I was curious though.. Is the undercoating in the interior (mainly tranny tunnel and rear hatch area) the same as the junk on the bottom of the car? Has anyone successfully removed this stuff and if so, what method(s) did you use?

 

Just curious.

[Lunar240z]

my dad suggested using a heat gun, and then scraping it, with a chisel or what have you... most of mine just scraped/fell off..

[wheelman]

Use dry ice in the cabin to freeze the stuff then chip it off. Place it on the floor and it'll freeze both the interior and exterior coatings.

The coating is basically the same stuff on the inside and the underside.

I used a combination of an air chisel and oven cleaner (easy off). It worked fairly well but I still have some left to do.

 

Wheelman

[MusPuppis]

Thanks guys.

 

Rear quarters, roof and rockers are almost done being prepped for prime/paint and once I get the rear, hatch area and all the glass edgeing done I gotta start on the interior.. which, well. Bah.

 

Thanks for the info, trying to arm myself with a battle plan before I start, lol.

[zguitar71]

Try a paint scraper and a hammer!

 

RacerX

 

That is what I did and it worked very well. I think no matter how you do it it is labor intensive and takes time.

[Forrest]

The dry ice did not work for us. We got an air chisel and it worked like it was designed specifically to remove interior coating from a Z.

[preith]

It seems like age and heat cycling play a role. In my '73 AZ car, it was hard and brittle, and very easy to take off with a chisel alone. In my '77 WI car this wasn't the case. I ended up using heat gun and it peeled off pretty easily. I didn't occur to me to use dry ice and would have tried it.

 

EDIT: Carburetor cleaner works VERY well for taking off any residual material left over. It did not affect the primer coat beneath it, not that it really mattered to me.

[Brad-ManQ45]

Use dry ice and a needle-scaler attachment on your air chisel.

[Guest Marsh]

Up here Canada we just wait for winter rather than using dry ice.

 

But I had a theory for this stuff in colder climates. My company recently did some work for a local dry ice blasting outfit and this process seemed ideal to me for removing sound deading material and undercoating from cars.

 

The process is like sand blasting, but the media is dry ice pellets. It works by using thermal shock, differential thermal expansion, gas expansion. It won't harm the metal, and in many cases won't even harm the paint and there is no media to clean up when your done because the dry ice evaporates on contact.

 

You can see some videos of the process here: http://www.cryosonic-usa.com/Industrial-Videos.htm

 

If your interested I'd like to hear if it really works as well as I think it willl. Check your yellow pages for a company providing services.

 

Ah, I should have googled before I posted. Here's a video of it being used on an old car: http://www.dryice-technic.com/video/OLDSMOBILE_DOWNLOAD.wmv

[ZG240]

Doing this on a cold day makes it much easier. The stuff will chip out rather than gumming up and getting nasty (I'm doing it in my Z right now).

 

Wear eye protection! Turn on the radio, roll up your sleeves, grab a chisel and a rubber mallet, and get cracking.....