Part 4

When we finally had all the interior stripped out of the car, we started researching ways to get the sound-deadening material out of the floor boards.  Why not try to shave a few more pounds?  Besides, I assume it's a hassle to try to install a roll cage with this crap still in the car.

I saw some post on the web about burning it out, but that was mainly on bare chassis and the results were never spectacular.  That and I didn't feel like burning my house down.  Or my neighbor's.  There was also the brute force route: hammer, chisel, etc., but that seemed like a lot of work and the weather was hot as hell.

Finally, I stumbled across a web page describing the use of dry ice.  Basically, you pour it in the floor boards, wait a little while, then smack it with a mallet.  Sounds reasonable.

So we stopped by the local welding supply hours and picked up a cooler full of the stuff.  It's not terribly expensive, but it is certainly heavy.  I didn't specify any particular weight, so when the guy asked me if 50 lbs was enough I kinda freaked out a little, thinking this was going to get expensive.  It wasn't bad, but that cooler was heavy.

We started out by just dumping in bowls of the stuff. 

We let it sit for a few then pushed it aside and smacked the floor with a mallet.  Viola!  The chips were flying!  That worked pretty well on the flat surfaces, but for the angles and transmission tunnel, it wasn't going to work.  So we loaded dry ice into gallon zipper bags and piled them up.

This worked well enough, and before too long we had the majority of the material loosened up.

We pulled out the chunks then vacuumed it out.  It's looking pretty good now.

Next step: noxious chemicals and power tools...

There was still some little bits of sound material in the car, and remnants of the adhesives used on the interior and headliner.  I stopped by the local hardware store to see what they had in the way of adhesive removers and found some stuff that's used for removing the glue left behind when removing vinyl tile.

A word of advice: if the instruction tell you to use chemical gloves and goggles, you probably ought to heed them...  In my first attempt at using this stripper, I tried nitrile gloves and a sponge paint applicator.  Bad plan.  Both lasted a total of about 4 and a half minutes.  And when that stuff gets on your skin it burns pretty nice.  So back to the store for elbow-length chem gloves and a better applicator. 

Second try was much better, and it only took a couple hours to get all of the leftover sound deadening material and adhesive out, plus a lot of paint (by accident).  I didn't get a lot of pics because I had the chem gloves on, so all you really get to see if the final product.  Hit it up with a wire wheel on the angle grinder and it didn't look too bad.  Well, it looked better, anyway.

Next step, final prep for paint.