ITS Ford Mustang(s) Build - Stripper Stang Part II

[Ron Earp]

..washer .....washer bottle....Must.....must not remove.....washer bottle......

Not a whole lot under the fenders to deal with. Cruise control, washer bottle, ABS stuff, and the controversial carbon canister, which in a race paddock is more rare than rocking horse poo.

One thing that is notably absent is rust and undercoating, a welcome change from the Z.

[joeg]

Forget the dry ice...sort of an urban legend and very much material dependent. For Fords you need to get the cold under the material and you therefore need to be on a rotisserie.

The N2 death ray is the nuts.

For me it was a acraper and a Dynazip. Hardwork but it gets the job done.

[tim240z]

plastic/aluminium hardware time?

[Ron Earp]

I am not sure the dry ice will work either, but it is cheap and I have 25 lbs ready to go. Removing those mats is more for aesthetics than anything else because there is precious little weight involved with them.

[shwah]

I always removed that stuff with a propane torch and a putty knife. Heat it to just bubbling and it comes right off, leaving clean primer underneath.

[Ron Earp]

The dry ice myth is busted, at least on a 1998 Ford Mustang sound deadening removal. I used dry ice in various ways - direct on the material, in bags, taped to the bottom and nothing worked. Had 25+ lbs on hand too and allowed it plenty of time to get to as low of a temp as possible. Wouldn't crack and wouldn't chip off.



What works really well is a heat gun and a couple of metal scrapers. About 45 mins and Jeff G and I had the driver's side about 90% done. Tomorrow we'll have two heat guns and also give it a go with the torch. There seems to be happy medium where it isn't too cold, nor too hot, and it comes off in nice large sheets.



I calculated that one square centimeter of this junk weighs 5.5 grains. At 7000 grains to a pound and with a re-calcuation of the square area we come up with 7 lbs of material. A lot of work for 7 lbs, but with a car like this that is severely weight challenged you have to do it. Besides, leaving it was going to piss me off. I envision a nice tidy white interior for this car and having those deadening mats painted over would always remind me that I "didn't do it right".

We've also already separated a couple of wiring harnesses and removed non-required circuits that we can legally remove. Man, there are a metric assload of circuits on this car and I suspect we'll be 10-15 lbs lighter on wiring when we're all through. Be a lot of work though, but again, something that is needed. All these little pounds add up and put us closer to that unobtainable 2480 lbs weight.

[Matt93SE]

It's a bit late to add, but I've found that the dry ice is much less effective in summer. When it's nice and cold outside, the dry ice works wonders. I started when it was about 40 deg outside and pulled the entire floor of my Nissan out in 30 min and about 6 pcs. I got busy with life and came back about May to finish the rest of the car. OMFG I couldn't get anything to come loose!
Finally I wound up packing towels under the bottom of the sheet metal, and then put the dry ice down on top and covered it in more towels. that finally did the trick and got it cold enough the glue finally froze.