Sand blast or ??? Farmall 560

About to starting redoing my 560. I have to find all the sheet metal as it sit outside for years in Florida and rusted. Would sand blasting be the best for the rest of the tractor or???????? Thanks for any help

Others have their own opinions. If you sandblast the cast without disassembly sand will get everywhere you don't want it. As to the sheet metal, I warped the hood on my 460 with my puny sandblaster.

i have had good results powerwashing once or twice and going over the whole tractor except the sheetmetal with a wire cup brush on a 4 inch grinder. eye protection a must.

CNKS is right about sand getting everywhere. The landlord had a JD 60 blasted & even though everything was covered, sand got into the starter. Loaded it up. Guess who got the starter disassembly & cleaning job??

[b:1fbc4cda97]Soda blasting is the way to go if blasting.
Any scatter will rinse away and is more environmentally friendly.
It also doesn't pit up the finish like silica media.


Maxx [/b:1fbc4cda97]

Don't sandblast the tin. Unless the blaster REALLY knows what he is doing, he will overheat and warp the sheet metal.

I have had good and bad experiences with sandblasting. As others said, I would never sandblast an assembled tractor. I only sandblast parts and not all parts as I never sandblast engine or hydraulic parts. I have my engines hot dipped and I use a wire wheel for finishing/cleaning hydraulic parts. Once I sandblasted the main transmission housing (didn't completely disassemble the back of the tractor) after I had all the rest of the tractor rebuilt. I thought I had all the holes covered, but since there is not a gasket between the brake housings and the transmission housing, sand got in the brakes. I had to take them back apart and clean. Others also have said never sandblast sheetmetal. I have had good success if you are careful. You have to keep the blast nozzle at a distance and use the finest grit sand you can purchase. I remember the biggest disaster I had sandblasting sheetmetal was just after I bought my sandblaster. My son brought over the covers for his baseboard heating units that had many layers of paint on them. By the time we had all the paint and rust off they were virtually unusable as they were warped so bad. Roger

Well, this is a personal preference thing. However, my strong opinion on this is the only things on a tractor that get sandblasted are parts that are OFF the tractor.............NEVER assembled.

IMHO.

Has anybody tried ice blasting yet? Dad's work has two machines and he says they would work perfect. The one gets special dry ice pellets and the other uses plain old dry ice blocks. From there they work just like a sandblaster. I would guess you could blast assembled components because the dry ice would just evaporate if it got inside.

Actually it's not the heat that does it, it's a mechanical thing. The sand particles are like millions of little hammers denting the surface of the metal.

On a large scale, the stretching or compressing of the skin of just one side of a piece of thin metal is going to end up in distortion.

Just like wood curling up when you get one side wet because only one side expends.

Soda blasting is much less intense on the metal surface, and much much better on sheet metal. Although, it's not nearly as aggressive as "sand", it'll strip paint, but not as good on heavy rust.

It just uses a special form of baking soda, so clean up isn't as bad - plus you can go right over chrome, glass, etc without masking. Most sand blasters can be converted pretty easily.

While I'm going on about sand blasting - be sure never to use silica sand - very, very bad for your lungs. Stick to the stuff made for sandblasting.

I use silica sand because it is much cheaper than anything else. I use the same supplied air system that I use for paint with isocyanate containing hardener. It works fine. Also I did use some of the sand blasting material from a local farm store once, that is the last time because it is very hard to clean up. But for someone with no supplied air, I agree with you.

There is NO reason to use sand on sheetmetal these days,AT ALL!!!!

With all of the current blast media being produced,there is not even a reason to take a chance on it.If you do tear up your sheetmetal,you will spend a ton on the body work to make up for such a mistake!!!!

When I had my super M nose piece done,it was done with a special media made for body panels.No dinging or warping at all.AND IT DIDNT COST ANY MORE THAN USING REGULAR SILICA SAND !!!!!