The Golden Age of publishing is in the past, so what’s a journo meant to do? How about Hydro-Blasting?
We probably should have done this 20 years ago, but my mate Bondini and I have now gone and done a thing. Yep, we’ve started a business.
It’s not that I’m going to turn my back on writing about cool old cars and the people who drive them, but it’s also true that since COVID, my industry of choice (motoring publishing) has kind of hit the wall with a bit of a thud. Not to mention that the current crop of SUVs and EVs leave me colder than a well-digger’s bum-crack, and you can maybe see how I thought it was time to perhaps branch out a bit.
And since Bondini was also a bit jaded with the way the engineering industry was heading, we figured we might as well come up with a Plan B for the pair of us. Mainly because nobody else was going to employ a pair of stooges like we two.
The good news is that the business we’ve started is still closely snuggled up to the subject matter of this fine, family magazine you’re holding right now. And that’s because we’ve gone and built a monstrous hydro-blasting plant which is the centrepiece of our venture.
Anybody for a quick history lesson? Okay. The idea of using pressurised water to clean stuff is not new. Think mining sluices and steam jets and you’re on the right tram. But it wasn’t until the 1970s and ’80s that the concept of using a jet of water mixed with a blasting medium was picked up.
Until then, of course, we’d had sand-blasting (invented 2000 years ago when an overnight wind-storm in the Sahara desert took the high spots of everybody’s camel) which is very effective but can lead to heat build-up which can distort panels (and possibly camels) and is reckoned to be a major contributor to the incidence of breathing disorders and even some cancers. That said, with proper dust extraction technology and careful use, sand-blasting can be effective and safe, but we had what we reckoned was a better idea.
And that was hydro-blasting which uses a mixture of water and tiny, circular glass beads, and combines that with pressurised air to produce a glorious jet of cleaning magnificence. Or something close to it.
Anyway, this tech has a range of advantages, starting with the fact that it’s actually environmentally friendly. There are no chemicals used (just glass, air and water) the glass itself is made from recycled bottles and is the same stuff they put in road-marking paint to give a strong reflection. (It’s also like being on roller skates if you spill any on a smooth floor.)
The process is also kind to whatever you’re blasting because it creates no heat. So even a dummy like me can blast a Kingswood bonnet without warping it. And hydro-blasting removes zero metal, so it can’t wreck anything. There are no sparks, no pollutants and you can even recycle the water and glass beads. The finish is terrific, too, with alloy, in particular, obtaining a nice, satin shine that brings it back to as-new. Or even better-than-new.
What you will see is that it absolutely devours paint, grease, corrosion and general crud. Take a squiz at the before and after pics here; you could spend the rest of your life with a toothbrush and a tube of Autosol and not get the finish that hydro-blasting can produce.
Perhaps best of all, it’s quick, so it can work out pretty cheap, too.
The blasting plant we wound up building is an absolute monster (Bondini’s one of those if-some-is-good-more-must-be-better guys).
According to research I just made up, it’s the biggest in the southern hemisphere. It’ll take a drum-to-drum diff, front K-member, chassis sub-frame or a truck engine block. But most incredibly, just a couple of years ago, it was a pile of stainless-steel sheets and tubes in a corner of our factory.
Yep, we built the whole thing ourselves, from a design cooked up by Bondini, who is actually a toolmaker by trade. He did the clever bits and I did the donkey-stuff (and I’m really good at tapping threads in stainless steel these days). Which is why it works at all.
Anyway, we’re now up and running and blasting all sorts of stuff like the wheels and rims for my Model T and every other grimy old manifold or rocker cover we can find lying around.
We’re located in Ferntree Gully in Melbourne’s outer east, and there’s a good pub about two minutes away. Give us a bell on 0484 198 138 and drop in to say g’day. Better yet, drag out all those crusty bits and pieces of your project you’ve been putting off cleaning, and give Eastern Hydroblasting (that’s us) a go.
We’re at Factory 6, 1829 Ferntree Gully Road, Ferntree Gully. But make sure you ring first to make sure we’re around. There’s a good pub nearby, remember …
Wheels and stance
I’m a huge fan of the concept of ‘it’s your car, do what you want with it’ but still, some trends and fads leave me wondering what the hell’s going on.
Remember 20-inch wheels on 1960s cars? Yeah, well, turns out I was right about that one and that it never should have happened.
Sure, some folks are persisting with huge Boyd Smoothies on their EH, but the general consensus seems to be that deep-dish jelly beans in a 14- or 15-inch fitment is a better look on a chrome bumper classic. Again, it’s your car etc, but the monster wheel thing appears to have largely come and gone.
But then I spotted a beautiful LX SL/R-5000 in traffic the other day. It was red with the proper black-outs and it sounded like there was probably some kind of healthy small-block under the lid. But the owner had also subscribed to a couple of current trends that I struggle with.
The first was the fitting of a set of what’s called Weld Racing V Series alloy wheels.
Now, if this is the best wheel you’ve ever seen in your life, then go for it. But I can’t help but think that there’s a little bit of fashion-driven stuff going on here. As in, everybody and his dog seems to be running them right now.
I flipped through the August edition of Street Machine and, of the eight feature cars, four of them were wearing the Weld rims and a fifth was running a very similar wheel from a different manufacturer.
The problem with this is that what is actually a pretty impressive wheel (and they are beautifully made, with bead-locks and lots of dish) soon becomes the copy-cat default setting and, at that point, loses its visual impact. And if you do remember when Boyd Smoothies (and wheels like them) were the hot ticket item, you’ll also recall how they became last year’s wheels pretty damn quickly. There’s also the question of whether a street-driven car needs the V Series’ functioning bead-locks.
But even more inexplicably on the Torana I spotted that started me thinking about all this, was the second trend I fail completely to comprehend. And that is the way so many car builders have now switched to a head-up-bum-down stance. I know that back in the day, we raked cars the other way to fit huge, fat wheels and tyres under the rear without them rubbing, and that was well past sensible, too.
For my money, the perfect stance is lowered all-round with a slight nose-down attitude. And the stuff that’s happening now is the opposite of that.
I guess maybe having the nose a little higher than the rear is good for weight transfer in a drag-racing scenario, but most of these modded cars never see the strip in the first place. So it must all be about the current fashion for stancing a car that way. At which point, I’ll go back to my original view that building a modified car is all about expressing your own personality, not mirroring everybody else’s.
But more than that, it just looks wrong to my tired old eyes. A bit of nose-down gives any car a splash of aggression; like it means business. But this new idea of pointing it uphill just reminds me of a dog on its hind legs begging for a biscuit. Or, indeed, the same pooch making some room for its next meal.
My faith, however, was restored a few days ago when I spotted a mid 1960s Dodge Phoenix hauling into traffic just in front of me.
Now, big American boats are not really my thing, but this huge, while slightly scruffy, thing cut such a gangsta figure it was impossible not to be impressed. And that wasn’t because it was pointing uphill or was wearing Weld V Series wheels. Nope, it was lowered equally all-round and was rocking a set of widened steelies in metallic grey with white-lettered tyres. Absolute perfection. If you know what I mean.
Hopefully, it’ll never catch on.