It's Scott Ales with Dryce Nation.
So, today I'd like to show you
the step-by-step process
that we go through in dry-ice cleaning.
So, there's a number of things
that are unique about dry-ice cleaning.
No. 1, we're not using water,
so when we're done, we're not cleaning up water spots,
we're not trying to dry things.
If you can see the dirt, we can clean it.
So there's a lot of places
where you might be able to see that dirt
but you can't physically get to it
with any tools or brushes or devices,
and we can.
We can clean that in the deep recesses of your car
that you might not have been able to before.
It's like when the car rolled off the factory line.
You've cleaned it back to that condition.
So, when we're just getting started,
we're trying to identify the method
of what we're going to attack first.
When we put a car on the lift,
we always want to make sure
and pull the wheels off
so we can inspect the inner wheelhouse area.
We use a torque wrench to break the lug nuts loose.
We also like to consider, depending on the customer,
if they want us to remove the inner wheelhouse liners,
which are typically plastic,
to see if they want us to clean behind there.
So once we have the car on the lift and we're prepped,
we're then moving our attention
toward the compressed-air system
to make sure that we've got
all of our drying and cleaning systems
for the air system in order,
and then we're going to load the machine
with the dry ice
so that we're prepared to blast.
And so the first thing we try to do
is try to get the wheels out of the way.
We have four wheels, and we'll just
take those one at a time.
We'll look for tar, we'll look for adhesion,
remnants from old wheel weights,
which are totally a pain to remove,
and we make that pretty easy.
And then we'll just clean the wheels inside and out.
The three settings are, you've got pressure,
which is psi that you're all familiar with;
there's pounds per minute;
and then you've got size of particle.
So those are the three things that you can adjust.
But for the first time
we can actually choose the size of the particle,
so it enables us to be able do delicate things
in the same area of things that might be aggressive.
Previously you were putting those delicate items at risk
with the large particle size.
When we're starting the project,
we're always looking for the dirtiest area first.
We like to get the hard stuff out of the way,
so that when we get to those surfaces or those coatings
that we're trying to remove that are easy,
then it makes everything go smoother
because you're not double cleaning.
So, you'll notice as I'm cleaning
that the gun is never static.
It's always moving.
It's always constantly moving.
And the reason for that is we have
the risk of a concentrated -109 degrees
on a particular substrate or part of the car
that you could damage in one spot.
So, I'd like to take a minute
and explain how this actually works.
There's really three things that are occurring.
You've got kinetic energy,
which is driven by the psi of the air system.
You've got cold temperature, -109 degree,
that causes things to shrink so they lose adhesion.
And then you've got the actual thermal expansion
of a solid chemical going to a gas,
so that's 800 times its original solid size.
Those three things work very well together
to remove this dirt in a way
that you've probably never seen before.
There's a lot of technique opportunity here, right?
'Cause in a sense,
this is a bit of an artist's effort
at an industrial job, if you will.
I've found it to be helpful for me
to function in a circular pattern
so that I never have any hard lines.
The circular pattern gives me the control
that I feel comfortable with.
There's really nothing that's more fun
in this process than doing bare aluminum.
You really can't hurt bare aluminum,
and so in that case, you can crank it up,
it's more efficient, you feel better about it,
and it's very satisfying to the eye.
So, once we've removed
those really difficult grimy surfaces,
we do move into a combination of handwork
and fine-detail dry-ice cleaning.
People presume that what we're doing
is a magic wand
and we just wave it once and we're done,
and that's not true.
When we have surface rust,
we do integrate a fair amount of handwork.
Whether it be all-purpose cleaners,
white erasers, Ospho, 0000 steel wool,
definitely we do use handwork.
At the point in time that we believe
we're finished with the underside,
we'll bring the car down three or four feet,
and then we'll look at the top of the suspension
and the wheelhouse areas and then we'll notice,
"OK, we've got some more work to do here."
So once we've cleaned the underside of the car,
we bring the car down on the lift,
and we have an extra-wide lift
so that we can open the doors,
get the floor mats out,
we can do the interior vents,
the door jams, the engine bay, the trim.
And we don't abrade the surface,
and we'll do what takes somebody two hours in 10 minutes.
So, we were fortunate enough
to receive this '55 Porsche Speedster,
and it literally is a barn find.
What you're seeing here is me trying to see
if I can remove this crazy-thick mold
that's 30, 40 years old off 60-year-old vinyl.
That mold was so thick it would stop your fingernail.
This was a big moment for us,
and the end result is
we will apply some all-purpose cleaner at the end.
and we'll wipe off the final film from this panel.
But it just turns out spectacular.
So, we don't add to or remove any CO2
from the environment, so we're neutral.
And we don't use water, which means
that we don't rinse chemicals down a drain
into any sewer systems or into drain fields.
So from an environmental standpoint,
by far it is absolutely
a better cleaning solution
than using water and chemicals.
The dry-ice-cleaning world
could be considered the highest-level OCD crowd.
Think about the underside of a car
and the intricacies of every component.
There's a lot of surface area
to all of these parts and pieces.
Don't think that it's going to be easy,
but the satisfaction factor
for those that care about the way
their assets or their artifacts look
is at the highest level.
So it's worth the energy.