so i'm building this 95 Neon into a road racer- Chumpcar, specifically- and i've spent a couple of hours a day for the last 5 days with a propane torch and putty knife scraping the asphalt sound deadener off the floor... got most of it, except for the stuff up under the dash, which i'll get when i get around to pulling what's left of the dash (honestly, it's just the dash bar and the guts of the steering column that's left...) and wiring out at some point in the future..
anyways, what would one use to get the remaining small bits of tar off the floor? do i have to go to town with a wire wheel on a grinder, or would something like acetone dissolve it and allow me to wipe it off? i could just leave it as it is and call it good, but i figured that since i came this far i might as well go the rest of the way..
wae
HalfDork
8/3/14 12:28 p.m.
I used dry ice and an air hammer. Actually worked pretty well and went fairly fast.
When you are using the propane torch are you heating the tar or the panel from below it?
I see lots of folks heat the surface of the tar and have to deal with a sticky mess. If you heat the underside of the panel it lifts off in big chunks.
But fot the bits left behind a solvent of some type usually does the trick. A can of brakeleen or carb cleaner will work.
Ditchdigger wrote:
When you are using the propane torch are you heating the tar or the panel from below it?
I see lots of folks heat the surface of the tar and have to deal with a sticky mess. If you heat the underside of the panel it lifts off in big chunks.
But fot the bits left behind a solvent of some type usually does the trick. A can of brakeleen or carb cleaner will work.
i heated it up from the top... i wasn't about to lay on my back under the car, then crawl out and go inside the car to remove it... much easier to just kneel there and heat/scrape/heat scrape... a quick blast of fire got it gooey enough to scrape off, but there is still a bit of residue.
if carb cleaner will work on what's left, i'll go with that. brake cleaner costs more and gets used up a lot faster.
In reply to novaderrik:
Carb cleaner will remove or damage paint where brake clean will usually not.
I did the same job on my Spec Neon build. I started using heat and putty knife and after a lot of work and blisters I tried using dry ice, let it sit then whack it with a hammer worked4-5 times faster for the same area cleared and left less residue to clean. I used a wire wheel on a drill and brake clean as I painted the interior after cage install for a nice finished look. BTW the Krylon textured light grey was awesome paint. I carried all my race gear,equipment and spares and nothing hurt the paint. Jack stands and floor jack moving around, spare front hubs etc.. that stuff was like diamond plate.
Ditchdigger wrote:
In reply to novaderrik:
Carb cleaner will remove or damage paint where brake clean will usually not.
i'm still in "tear down" phase, so if paint gets damaged it doesn't matter.. i just want the gooey stuff gone..
I found just rattling on it with an air hammer on a low setting pops it off in big chunks.
after a few hours of torching and scraping and spraying and scrubbing, i nailed down a pretty simple procedure that should allow me to do it all in a couple of hours the next time i do it:
use torch and putty knife to get the big stuff off
use carb cleaner and wire wheel on drill to get most of the residue and left over stuff off.. a new style Dewalt 20 volt XR drill goes about 1/2 hour of steady running before the battery dies, which is convenient because it takes just under a half hour to recharge the battery...
use carb cleaner and green scotch brite pads to get the remaining residue
after doing the first step all at once in the whole car over a period of about 2 hours total, i then spent about 4 hours trying to get the leftovers on the first half trying different things, then spent about an hour on the second half using the carb cleaner/wire wheel/scotch brite method.. i think it turned out pretty ok for a first timer:
