Nissan Spec-V: Part 2: Removing Sound Deadener
7/10/2006
Now we take on the messy and tedious task of removing the sound deadener and sealer. The sound deadener consisted of a felt-like material soaked in a black, sticky tar. The sealer had two different forms: a black, rubbery tar-like substance and a white, rubbery substance.
We removed the sound deadener by freezing it with dry ice and pounding it with mallets. Freezing it made it brittle and hitting it made it crack off in large, easy-to-handle sheets.
Unfortunately, the sealer didn’t get brittle with cold and had to be ground out by hand. Thankfully, the sealer stuck to itself and could be removed by rolling it into a big, sticky ball of goo. After removing about 50 pounds of sealer tar and sound deadener from the interior, we have clean, bare steel. We can begin welding on the steel when we start our roll cage next week.
This week I continue to ruin a perfectly good econobox to make a racecar. We already stripped the car to its shell and removed the interior, engine and transmission. We shipped the engine to Jim Wolf Technology to fortify it for turbocharged use so it will withstand over 300 hp.
To remove the sound deadener, we crushed dry ice over the sheet of deadener with a hammer and then spread it over the surface of the sheet. Here, Aaron Guardado cools down some deadener.
Once the sheet gets nice and cold, strike it with a mallet and it will either shatter into chucks or detach itself whole. SE-R Cup racer, Annie Sam, beats some sound deadener.
Five-year-old Christa Kojima follows the family tradition for building fast cars.
The dry ice and tar sit in chunks after being shattered in the cold.
Annie cleans up the mess.
Steven Quinn discovered that tar sealer sticks to itself better than the car’s body. A sticky ball of tar sealer is used to effectively blot the tar off the body.
Shawn Guardado attacks the rubber sealer with an angle grinder and a stainless-steel twisted wire wheel.