RESTORATION
EASTWOOD COMPANY’S
SMALL JOB SODA BLASTER
LESS IS MORE IN THIS AFFORDABLE, EASY-TO-USE SYSTEM
story and photography by Tom Shaw
Y
ou’re under the hood for a little weekend fix-up, and
you’ve got the new parts ready to go in. But you can’t
bear the thought of putting it all back together with dirty,
greasy bolts and brackets. What to do?
You open the box the UPS man just brought containing the
out-of-production parts you got on eBay. They’re good, but
someone gave them a rinky-dink paint job and they need to be
redone. What to do?
You have an assortment of old, aluminum parts — brackets,
fittings, manifolds, and air conditioning parts — that are dull,
oxidized, and look like heck. What are you going to do?
Eastwood Company has a handy solution: the Small Job
Blasting Kit (part number 13943). For less than $50, you get
a big 10-pound jug of blasting media — soda or abrasive, gun
with replacement nozzles, lines, pickup tube, and an Allen
wrench for servicing the gun. It’s everything you’ll need except
for the air compressor and safety equipment.
Speaking of the compressor, this is a smaller system that
doesn’t demand a big, heavy, expensive compressor. It needs as
little as 7 cfm at 80 psi. Moderate-to-small compressors should
have plenty of capacity.
Soda blasting is a relatively gentle process that will remove
paint, but not rust. That makes it easy on areas near glass or
trim. With some practice and discretion, it might even be
used on urethane and hard plastics. This same system will also
operate with more aggressive media, like crushed glass, for
removing rust.
This is a small rig, but if you need a bigger one, Eastwood
has plenty from which to choose. From a value standpoint, this
setup is hard to beat. It also takes next to no storage space. We
took it for a spin around the FOX Mustang garage.
84 FOXMustangMagazine.com