Interior Decorating - Part 1

I was feeling a little better today so I decided to move forth with one of my other projects; preparing the rear of the car for the rollbar. I wanted to modify the carpet so that there was no longer carpet in the rear, as it really looked half done and not appealing. Then, I wanted to remove the sound deadening tar for weight savings, as well as having it so that the rollbar bolts down to metal directly and not metal – to tar – to metal.
Big ups to Lou for helping me out with this project as I got to see some of his handy blade work. We removed the carpeting first with careful cuts due to the wires under the carpet around that area. After that, we removed the foam that was under the carpet. Then we went over the cuts to make sure it looked as clean as possible. Once done there, we were ready to remove the tar, so we went on over to Brookline Ice & Coal for some dry ice.

WARNING For those of you who don’t know, dry ice can be fatal. Try to avoid breathing in the fumes of the dry ice, especially from the core as those fumes are the most poisonous. Don’t touch it with your skin as it will be instant freezer burn. If you’re handling it with gloves and you feel a hot sensation, not the typical cold feeling, immediately drop it as whatever protection you are using is not thick enough. For the project you’ll need

• We Bought 10 lb of dry ice slabs (above) for the entire trunk, and a bit of the rear floor with some left to spare.
• Hammer or Rubber Mallet
• Chisel
• Thick Leathery Gloves
• Painting Mask

1. Break up the ice into decent sized pieces and settle it on top of the tar
2. Try and cover as much tar as possible with the dry ice, and if you need more just break it into smaller pieces. NOT too small as it will evaporate faster and be less effective
3. After 15 minutes you’ll notice the tar start to turn light in color, meaning it has become brittle. Here is where you want to remove the ice and place it on another piece of tar, and grab your trusty hammer
4. Beat on the tar with the hammer in various spots until you notice it to start cracking and shatter
5. From there, I used the hammer to loosen the tar from the metal if I had to, but the rest of the way I used the chisel or back of the hammer to pull at the tar
6. Repeat this process for all the various tar patches in the car
7. For the tar patch that goes from the trunk and ends at a slant behind where the passenger seats would be, set as much dry ice as possible near the edge. The fumes will do a waterfall effect over the edge and slowly work into the tar, making it brittle enough to remove with a chisel after. Will take longer than the usual 15 minutes (took us 30- give or take)
8. For the floor tar, you want to save this one for when you have other things to do right after. I say that because this one took the longest for us, as we needed roughly an hour or more of thick blocks to stay on the floor tar, allowing you to do other things meantime. We’re not sure why it took so much longer, and even then it was still a bit of a pain to remove. It had all sort of extra adhesive to it that I had to chisel out which took me some extra time.

Once you’re done you’ll notice there is a bit of residue left over from the tar patches all around the car. I’m saving that for part 2, but I think a wire sponge and some adhesive remover (maybe industrial googone?) should be able to do the trick here.

After the project though, we weighed how much the bag of tar was along with the feeling of how much heavier the shop vacuum became after taking all the little pieces. Give or take, we shaved off 15-20lb, and there is still plenty under the front seats that run along to the front of the car! Stay tuned for Part 2 of this project, that I'm hoping to start tomorrow.