Mopar Muscle Association UK

Mine came back fine.

i can understand why them dippers damage the cars, the place is like a war zone from the 40,s barely anyone workin there can speak english, its a hovel, but if the car has repairs to be done whats a few more after all its you that will be payin for it not john, get it dipped best start for a full resto

Good subject this Mart.

The weapon of choice in the US is good quality media blasting!

Why's that you ask? Well its the damage done by the lowering of panels into acid and neutralising tanks, and the constant bleeding out of fluid from the joints, for years to come. Seen some older resto's done with dipping and the cars fell apart years later as they corroded away at all the factory joints.

So then its gonna be blasting for me, and then only floorpans, wheelhouses, inner fenders, doorframes, framerails and braces ie, fender/hood/trunk.

The consensus of opinion says, leave all factory underseal insde the fenders and rear quarters. If you try and remove this the panels will be warped and or buckled.

All remaining paint should be removed by careful paintstripping, ie Nitromors or methanol, only kidding.
Most mopars were dipped halfway up the bodyshell with Etch primer.
If you remove all this, you need to replaace it asap.
Time is money, and bodyshop hours soon mount up!!!
Try and do as much Donkey prep yourself, or have a paintstripping Party as Booze is relatively cheap!!!
Hope this helps, Baccy.

Andy 70RTSE on here does media blasting at a place in the midlands, if your interested i can find you his number out.

Strange John is saying don't dip now, when I went there and spoke to him he basically said it's the ONLY way to do it

I spoke to John yesterday about some work on my Charger and see said the same to me. He said there is risk of twisting and also said that because it literally gets in everywhere that it's hard to clean out after and as someone else said it could cause problems later on. He did say for stripping it has the best results but the risks are high. I'm going to strip all my car by hand. Will take time but will be cheeper.

A few guys on the US forums talked about it recently and apparently dipping can remove a substance that stops the car from rattling

JustinMFox wrote:A few guys on the US forums talked about it recently and apparently dipping can remove a substance that stops the car from rattling

does this revelation mean future problems then for the cars that have used this process during the restorations ??

Dare I say Duncan, but a good chance there will be!

All the Acid dipped Racecars all disintegrated not long after being done.
'Big Willy's' Daytona Dragcar lasted only a couple of years!
The firewall/cowl/sidepods and floor sections are welded together with a bead of seam sealer trapped in between the flanges. Once acid eats this material away there is no protection against rust inthe large gap left behind. A bit of a worry?

All said and done, paint removal is a tricky and time consuming job.
Magnified by an overcoat of undercoat (underseal/Ziebart).

Happy scraping Fella's and Femme's.

Bacctastic.

Just found this on oldholden.com,looks like everything has potential problems.

Streetneat on Sat, 26/04/2008 - 20:50.

I think Im qualified enough to answer this one correctly :-)
Soda blasting is just another method of media blasting - in short you are hurling small particles under pressure at a surface in order to remove material. How that media crashes into the surface at speed and breaks up itself and the material is the only difference between blasting media.

Garnet ( sand) blasting is the preferred method for vehicles here at streetneat. Soda is also fine - but can leave residues that may be corrosive later on if all the media is not removed from every nook and cranny. Same goes for any other media - if its trapped and gets wet - corrosion will occur. We found that garnet is the safest as its neither overly acidic or caustic - some sodas when wet are caustic - I know of one company that went bust because it used the wrong soda and priming /materials practises and caused a lot of very expensive items to rust!

Tankv49 - the machinery should have been etch or epoxy primed prior to painting - its the fault of the painter - not the fault of the blaster in that scenario. Of course the painter will prefer to blame the blaster. With anything we have blasted we sand it a bit first anyhow to make sure there is no paint left or rust starting. We always use an epoxy primer such as PPG Delfleet or PPG DP40. Etch priming is also fine as long as you are going to paint shortly afterwards. You cannot use etch and epoxy primers together- they dont like each other.

Lastly dont take your car to a general sandblaster - they may destroy it. Only use a recommended car sandblaster. Any media will cause warpage in the wrong hands. There is a myth that heat generated from blasting destroys panels- thats true to a very small degree- but its mostly the stress relieving nature of blasting that causes warpage. Never blast both sides of a bonnet or flat panel - it will warp through stress relief. Epoxy prime everything that is blasted - its far better than etch priming.

Here's the thread, some interesting for and against views

http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index ... 134.0.html

baccaruda wrote:Dare I say Duncan, but a good chance there will be!

All the Acid dipped Racecars all disintegrated not long after being done.
'Big Willy's' Daytona Dragcar lasted only a couple of years!

Bacctastic.

John, you are talking about acid dipping for weight loss. This is acid dipping for apint removal. There is a BIG difference.


Just for the avoidance of doubt, after the acid dipping has taken place, the car shell is stuck in a tank the same size full of neutraliser, then its rinsed.

So, where ever the acid gets, the neutralizer gets. The corrosion comes from not sealing it properly.


I suppose eveyone here believes these cars were hand builtbespoke masterpieces from the factory? They werent. They were thrown together which is why they were rotten old dogs by the end of the 70's.


John is not keen on dipping at the mo because the DIPPPERS damaged the odd shell - not because he doesnt believe in it.

Agree with what your saying clivey, but the problem is, the acid eats away at the seam sealer, and ther is some places you cant get to as it was sealed while it was asembled in the factory.

Maybe Phill440 can give his 2 cents, his car was dipped I believe and it has been on the road a couple of years now