OK I hade 6 weeks off work thru COVID and another getting up to speed and now the weather huh! But I'm still removing media from the underside in areas around chassis beams and finding more stuff to do which I would have thought would come off with a bit of soap and a Karcher. Good points - exposed a couple of bits of corrosion which is welded up. First glance looks great. So so points paid £1700 to have done and was talking under £1000 the year before - COVID inflation perchance.. Bad points - Lots of sand like media in all cavities keeps coming out, lots of dressing of media in not only the hard to get to places but also many of the left facing vertical surfaces. and the trader put in two dodgy bolts and kept my front axles bolts only 4 off whew.. which doesnt make me very happy. They seem very expensive to replace like £35!!! Raised several times to the guy and got no answer . Are my expectations wrong - is blasting such a pain that you should expect to put in many hours of work after to make it good or should it be good for top coat which is what I intend to do or even am I being daft and should have sprayed over the media within 48hrs? Is this typical of the blasting experience?
Was that just for them blasting the chassis?! That seems very expensive to me. I paid £200 to have the underside of my bus blasted (this was about 4-5 years ago now). The van was on its side which would've made things easier and I completely emptied my unit so he could use his larger blasting gear to do it (took about 2 hours I think). He did an initial clean up and I spent probably another 2-3 hours thoroughly blowing out all of the cavities and cleaning up the unit. I then zinc primed it that day to stop any surface rust. I wouldn't top coat straight over bare metal, some sort of zinc rich primer is worth doing. For comparison I paid £150 to get the whole bug chassis blasted.
That sounds a lot tbh, unless you live in London of course… last shell I had blasted was a grand, including etch priming the whole shell. Yes you need to get it primed the same day really, and it will obviously need a lot of prep before you can think about top coat.
The price included a tinted epoxy prime and I did get a local guy offering a full blast for £350 but I borrowing a garage on on the clock as the owner is selling. I too thought £1700 was a bit much too specially as the same guy was talking under £1000 pre covid. I will do the prep when it warms up a bit as I need that 48hr window. Going to use Raptor on the inner wheel arches Peed off enough about the bolts to be honest to go small claims but really want to judge if thats OTT.
