1941 Chevrolet Pickup – Mobile Media Blasting Saves Money, Time, and Ensures Quality

Stripping a truck’s body down to the bare steel might sound like it’s a sexy process, but there’s more to it than meets the naked eye. Our slammed F-1 Ford driving friend Brian Shaw called and said he’d just inherited a 1941 Chevy pickup semi-basket case and wanted to know the best way to prepare it for paint. The Wurlitzer series, as noted automotive book author John “Gunner” Gunnel calls those old pre–Advance Design 1941-1947 first series Chevy trucks, belonged to a close friend of Shaw’s family. Restoring the old Chevy pickup back to its former glory provided the family friend years of relaxed recreation tinkering, but creeping old age beat him to the finish line.

One of the previous owner’s restoration preparations was to take a community college course on bodywork to bring the 1941 Chevy’s cosmetic appearance back to like-new. As anyone who’s ever dealt with restoring a 50-plus year old truck, no matter where it spent its life there’s going to be a certain amount of cancerous rust that’s eaten holes clean through the sheetmetal, and find numerous dents packed with Bondo. The bodywork the family friend performed was plenty good enough to move onto glossy paint, but the talc-based lacquer primer he used over bare metal had allowed years worth of moisture to seep through and rust. This meant Shaw needed to start all over and strip off the porous gray lacquer primer and numerous coats of alkyd enamel down to the bare steel and recoat with a modern direct-to-metal (DTM) epoxy primer.

This brings us to the different ways a soul can take an old truck’s body down to bare metal. The first and biggest pain in the buttocks way to do it is with a body grinder and abrasive disc. Always wear eye and breathing protection and get ready to be covered in flying spent abrasives with chunks of dried paint and rusted steel particles. Too much heat from a grinding disc can warp sheetmetal, and hard-to-access areas will be impossible to reach. The next method is to buy one of the numerous DIY media blasters available on the market, but be patient because these home blasters are usually slow even with a large air compressor supplying the push; smaller air compressors produce copious amounts of condensation turning into water that causes media clumping, so a lot of time can be lost unclogging tips.

From DIY paint stripping solutions the next move is to seek out professional help. We’ll skip chemical dipping and go right to sandblasting, which is a catchall term for every type of media from using walnut shells mixed with a coarse abrasive (sometimes sand) to soda blasting. Shaw obtained local estimates up to $1,500 to media blast the 1941 Chevy complete and one high estimate was from a place that recently warped a friend’s 1956 Ford hood into unusable twisted scrap.

As a CPA (certified public accountant) it was in Shaw’s nature to perform due diligence and seek out the best solution to satisfy his requirements for the job. At the top of the list was to ensure the media blasting would be done properly without warping (destroying) the sheetmetal, followed by getting the best bang for his buck. Shaw’s buddy Jay Ligtenberg at Stoker’s Hot Rod Factory in Upland, California, recommended contacting a mobile operation that offered dustless wet blasting. Shaw consulted with several local companies and decided KC Power Clean in Brea, California, was the best choice. The hourly rate KC Power Clean charged was $160. It cost him $800 to blast the cab, bed, running boards, and fenders plus Shaw tipped $50 for a job well done. To watch video taken of KC Power Clean dry and dust-free wet blasting Shaw’s 1941 Chevy please log onto www.classictrucks.com.