To dip or not to dip, pros and cons

Dipping has its pros and cons. I dipped one of my restorations a while back and it worked out beautifully. All the filler melts away, and I didn't see any issues with leading. They neutralize after the dip, so acid shouldn't be a problem. The main problem is finding a place that will do it, because of increasing environmental regulation.

 

you can dip the body but not the chassi, you can never remove acid inside of the chassi tube
it will come in from all the poor weldings

 

you will have a much lighter chassi after he he, that Company dont recomend to dip cars with chassi like on Dinos

 

i chemically remove all the rust in my shop, better than any blasting, the surface get a protective film afterwards, and i can let this doorskin for 15 years without rust again
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no there is nobody in sweden doing that, i do it myself on inside and outside of the body but not chassi, that Company in UK dont recomend to do chassi because its impossible to remove all the acid, (and you would need to drill big holes) i see when i do how important it is to remove all acid, if you have any acid left it will eat up the steel

 

if you want to use that Company they charge you about £2000 and you need to do 2 times

 

Peter,
I went through this and got alot of advice.
In the end, hand stripping if there is no rust is best but don't let them do it with a grinder/friction disk.

I took my L to a specialist grit blaster who use various media of different grades to get all the paint/rust off with no damage. It's around 40 hours of careful work on the chassis/body and I wouldn't recommmend you take it to someone who hasn't done Ferraris. They can't touch the aluminium, must be done by hand.

Use whatever local specialist you have and the painter recommends.
Over here they worked together for 20 years to get the best results.

 

I restore cars professionally to perfection for customers, media blasting of any kind is not good, metal stress and hard, and get dented, some rust will always remain, I have used acid for many years for removing rust, and it removes 100% SPL has only made ONE car with chassis but it was maybe before they saw that it was difficult to clean the inside of the chassis, I talked to Adrian at SPL a few months ago they said it was not so good to deal with a tube chassis because of the difficulty of access inside the pipes, they wanted all the pipes drilled at both ends with 6 or 8mm so they could flush out, if you want to make your car its the best method to completely remove all rust, but you have to drill many holes at each end of each tube. I can assure you that you have rust, even if it looks good, behind door skins front edge to the frame is always rust, front wing against the doors have a double panel That always rusts out to the wing
there's a company in Norway which makes similar treatment for about 20,000 Norwegian, but they have no after treatment with primer. I think they said that the tin is dissolved, but there are those who believe that tin is not good to use on the body so you can use That plastic body filler shiiit instead

 

I researched this quite a bit while restoring my Alfa Romeo SS. I have a Dino but didn't do the work so cannot comment. The process works very well for for open frame/body designs, and those that do not have any aluminum. The Alfa SS body (unlike the SZ) is all steel except the front hood lid and large inner aluminum supports within the front steel box sections that the suspension attaches to. These structures are not visible unless these box sections are opened, and I was told the aluminum would essentially dissolve during the process, making the attachment points very weak. My opinion was ultimately to leave sleeping dogs lie, and leave any non-structural surface corrosion on the inside of the car alone - likely this dry film will protect against further corrosion, and to use a mild abrasive agent such as walnut shells/corn husks on the exterior of the car.
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Have you considered soda or dry ice blasting?

 

Looks like a lot of work, I have just also had to scrape all the sealing gunge out before my chassis goes off for soda blasting on Friday. Ferrari's reliance on rivets and gunge makes getting the cars apart again tricky in places!

 

Reading this thread reminds me of the messy job of stripping the underside. It can be done with several iterations of paint stripper (Nitromors in this case), plastic scrapers, panel wipe, Scotch pads and a Dremel with diamond ball tips to get into the corners and folds of each weld. I also used Jenolite to help etch away and shallow rust in difficult areas, prior to another round of the Dremel. This approach needs lots of patience, but very rewarding to see a clean surface for painting.
Kevin
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We used industrial strength paint stripper to remove an incredibly thick layer of tar like undercoating. While the job was very unpleasant and messy, it was more time consuming than anything else. You can see some pics of the work here:

Dino 246 Restoration Blog: Product Spotlight: Goudey Paint Stripper

I too was amazed how much exposed metal there was when the fiberglass was removed but was also amazed how rust free most of it was. Of course we gave all this metal as much rust preventative treatment as we could in an effort to slow down future rust creatures.