quick and dirty sound deadener removal

[Chris Sawatsky]

so I sat down once again today intending to finish chiseling out the sound deadener from my crx. And as usual, after half an hour I lost interest.
So I decided to try a new approach... I put a wire wheel on an angle grinder, and used it to brush off the sound deadener. As promised, it was quick, and dirty. Little black bits were flung all over. They cleaned up very easily with a shopvac though

Just thought I'd share this method for anyone else who's frustrated with chiseling

[Knestis]

The trick with that method is to avoid overheating the tar/crap, holding the brush in one place too long...

K

[jc836]

Great idea. Have you considered the plastic grinding tools/brushes from 3M. They are much nicer than the wire type. I have been using them on the underbody and like you they produce a bunch of little bits for the shopvac to pick up. I agree that not overheating the tar is important. We also used a paint scraper with chisel edge and a hammer-very fast.

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Grandpa's toys-modded suspensions and a few other tweaks
'89 CRX Si-SCCA ITA #99
'99 Prelude=a sweet song
'03 Dodge Dakota Club Cab V8-Patriot Blue gonna tow

[Allen Brown]

Chris, How are you keepin? The chisel / hammer method works great if you roll the car out of the nice warm shop and let the car outside. Once the undercoating gets cold (froze)..It breaks off in large chunks. This worked well on my RX7.

Hope to make it out to Gimli in the 2004 season.

Cheers.

[joeg]

Chris--I suppose it depends on the composition of the sound deadener. When I tried that method last year, it just made a gooey mess.

I finally landed up using chemical stripper and a hand scraper. It worked, but certainly was not easy (or safe for that matter).

Regards.

[eh_tony!!!]

Never tried it, but I have heard that if you cover the deadener in dry ice, it becomes so brittle that you can just flake it off.

[Richy Gonzalez]

Dry ice works like a charm. ...especially if you live in Sunny Florida.

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Richy Gonzalez
GB Racing - #24 ITA CRX
LAMIN-X Protective Films

[MK]

Snap-On PGS1A Air Powered Gasket Scraper if you have a compressor. Works on most undercoating/sound deadener/seam sealer without tearing up the metal like an air chisel will. If you're careful it won't even scrape up the primer.

If you try it, you'll never go back to anything else. Super fast, fun even. It won't work on VW super gooey carpet advesive from hell. Anyone have a trick for that?

[Chris Sawatsky]

-yeah I found that keeping the brush moving works the best to keep it from overheating the tar

-I typically use a 3m drill attachment that we affectionately call a Mule Skinner, for removing various substances from surfaces they're not to be attached to, but I didn't have any of them handy at the time. Most of my projects have to be done immediately after conception, as my attention span is about what you'd expect from someone of the video game generation

-I chipped half the stuff off one year after leaving the car outside all winter, but working in a cold car is unpleasant, and the shop I'm in now isn't the best neighborhood for leaving anything of value outside for any amount of time.
I don't remember if I saw you and the rest of the calgary crew at GMP this year, as most of my events were blinded by engine blowing frustration, but I'll definitely be back next year, hopefully you'll see me out at the front of the pack heh

-I've heard of using dry ice, but as I mentioned above, it was something that had to be done immediately, and I didn't have any dry ice handy

-after I finish the crx interior, I am NEVER EVER doing this again, so I don't think I could justify buying a $250 snap-on air tool with such a distinct purpose haha but thanks for the insight!

[Silkworm]

Dry Ice worked great for me

PaulC

[MK]

Chris-search ebay for one of those for under $100.

Scrapes gaskets too. Yeah, I went "How lazy can you get?" too, but I've since eaten those words.

[ddewhurst]

Paul, how many pounds of dry ice did it take & roughly how much time?

Thanks
David

[Greg Gauper]

Dave, the "leave it outside on a cold night" method worked great for me. Perfect for us Wiscohoovians Be patient and work small areas at a time. I found that an el-cheapo flat screwdriver worked the best. Blunt enough to not punch a hole in the floor, small enough to apply enough force, big enough to break the stuff up in big chunks.

Took about 5-6 hours. Put the football game on the portable TV, grab a twelve pack and go to town.



[This message has been edited by Greg Gauper (edited December 29, 2003).]

[x-ring]

Liquid nitrogen works great. A little squirt of LN2, tap the area with a rubber hammer, vaccum the shattered bits out.

I've used dry ice also. Same process, a little less handy than LN2, but easier to find in small quantity. I think five pounds is more than enough to do the interior of any car.

Ty

[Scooter]

I used/am using cans of compressed air from a computer store. If you hold them upside-down they'll freeze whatever they're sprayed at. (Really.)

I found this works better than dry-ice because the dry-ice can't be easily moved around and won't stay on slopes. Also, you have to wait until the dry-ice is gone before you can really start scraping. With the spray, you just squirt and scrape, squirt and scrape.

[Greg Gauper]

Better still if you are going that route...

They make an aerosol product for the electronics industry for spot cooling circuit boards, IC's, etc, to check for thermally sensative defects. This stuff will instantly leave a layer of frost on anything it touches! Much better than the cans of compressed air, but in either case (this or compressed air) I think you would go through a lot of cans. Good idea for small areas though.

[benracin]

The dry ice rocked. I got 2 blocks, they were like 3 inches thick and 10" by 10". Put them on the floor of the car and busted them apart with a hammer. I let it sit for awhile then took a whack at the floor of the car with the ice still on it and the rubber stuff just comes flying off. It was nice to leave the ice there because you could move it around and get portions that didn't come off as well. There is that problem of the steep parts of the rear where the ice won't stay. But I spent days with a little chissel doing a foot wide space and then did the whole car in a couple minutes with ice. And it usually breaks like glass, so you get nice big chunks you can pick up with your hands. Plus, as you all know, dry ice is cool. It makes the inside of the car look like it's from a horror movie.

Ben.

[dyoungre]

LOL - Any pictures?

[JackH55]

Anyone is welcome to use my driveway tonight.

Plenty of light and it is supposed to go down to 7 below. Windchill minus 30.

Jack

[ddewhurst]

So sorry Jack. A week ago the temp was -5* & I checked out the sound deadner & guess what.
The stuff was SOFT like it was +70* outside.

Have Fun
David

ps: I searched the temp of dry ice & found the temp to be -109*.

[This message has been edited by ddewhurst (edited January 13, 2004).]