Now instead of going to the blogger site (72ra21.blogspot.com), you can just point your shortcuts to 72ra21.com! BOOM! I'm here for you! Onto the car!
Before removing the sound deadener, I pulled out the steering column as well as the pedal assembly. As rusty as the bolts looked, this all came out with very little effort and nothing broken. Super excited about that. I also started soaking the screws (yes screws) used to hold the factory seat belt re-tractors to the body. I have a hand held hammer screwdriver I got from harbor freight. While that is working, it's been very slow going. They only turn a little, then freeze up again.
After the pedals and steering column, one of the items I needed to get out of the way was removing the factory sound deadening material from the interior. This is a hard plastic/resin/I dunno material that's adhered to the metal in the floor of the car. It's also partway up the firewall and over the transmission tunnel. You can dent it fairly easy with a sharp object, but it doesn't release from the metal that well.
I needed to get it out of the car so I could see just how bad the floor pans were. Any place this stuff had cracked over the years likely let water seep in where it would just sit and slowly work it's way into the metal.
There's several ways of trying to get this stuff off of the metal in the car. That's where the magic of the internet comes in!
- You can just try to chip it out piece by piece with a hammer, chisel, screwdriver, whatever you can find. Problem is, this takes a LOT of effort and time. You also run the risk of scraping the metal underneath, denting it and possibly making your future repairs even worse.
- You can use a heat gun to heat up the material then pry it up. This makes more of a mess than it's worth in my opinion and ends up leaving a lot of residue behind.
- You can use dry ice on it to 'freeze' it and break it away from the metal. Once it's been released, you just pry it up and throw it away.
I was a little skeptical on the dry ice idea, but I like science.. and it's close to Halloween. Besides.. DRY ICE. Who doesn't like playing with this sorta thing! I figured why not turn the car into a spooky science project. See if those Old Wives and the Internet knew what they were talking about.
I went to a local supplier and picked up two blocks of the stuff (roughly about 10 pounds). The overall cost of the stuff is pretty minimal. I knew I would need more than that, but didn't want to buy a lot if it wasn't going to work.
One of the gents at the store mentioned he'd used it to remove tile in his house. He said it worked wonders to release it (though it did end up breaking the tile). Maybe the internet was onto something!
I stuffed it all in a cooler and drug it over to the shop.
*NOTE! This stuff is COLD. It can burn your hands and/or other stuff it comes into contact with. Please use common sense and/or caution when handling it.
I had a nifty set of elbow length Tempshield Cryo-Gloves laying about, and figured this was the perfect time to put them to the test. Turns out they work magically. My hands were actually too hot in them. I was able to pick the stuff up and crush it with no problem! After a lot of the dry ice was gone, I changed up to leather gloves.
Some sites (and videos) on the internet mentioned mixing the dry ice with rubbing alcohol to get a super cold liquid that'd better cover the area and help it release better. The Celica has too many holes in the floor to see how well that'd work. Plus, that makes for a more .. fire friendly .. experiment. I wasn't looking for that. Instead, I just broke up a bunch of the dry ice and spread it around in the floor of the car. The evaporation of it turned the bottom of the car into a perfect Halloween-esque display! SKEERY FOG EVERYWHERE OOOOOOoo..
It only took a few minutes and you could hear the material in the car start cracking and poping. It sounded closer to a fire crackling than popcorn. Some of it releasing would pop and send the dry ice jumping around too. I'd recommend wearing eye protection. I am not a smart man.
Once an area stop cracking and popping I'd just move the dry ice around to another area to repeat the process.
Taking a hammer, screwdriver, and scraper to it, I found that this stuff would just come up in giant pieces. You could tell everywhere this stuff didn't touch because some areas were still only coming out in tiny pieces. Just put some dry ice on it and *boom!* it'd come right off!
This stuff worked like absolute magic! The internet does know something! I still need to get a couple more blocks to remove the last bits (mostly firewall and transmission tunnel).
The bummer with this process though was getting to see just how bad the floors of this car are. Yup, those light spots are holes in the floor. Where I initially figured I'd have to do some patching here and there; I'm now realizing I'll be replacing pretty much the entire floor on the front driver and passenger sides. The rear floor and back seat area are still good though! So there's a win!
Next up, I'll be working on suspension removal, and figuring out what rotisserie I want to go with. Stay tuned!
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