Forget yoga and meditation, if you want to de-stress at the end of a long day, there’s nothing like a great dry-ice video.
We’re suckers for all kinds of detailing videos, whether its watching a maggot-infested interior being vacuumed and shampooed back to life, or watching sun-bleached paint being rescued with cutting compounds and wax.
But there’s something really mesmerizing about seeing a car blasted with dry ice. Maybe it’s because the dirt is cleaned away almost magically, with no rubbing or wiping. It’s almost like the guy with the hose is spray-painting newness onto the car.
Related: Dry Ice Blasting Helps Keep This Pre-Production 959 As Original As Possible
The car in question on this occasion is a 1977 Porsche 911 S that recently sold on Bring-a-Trailer for $77,777 and would have come from the factory with a naturally aspirated 2.7-liter flat-six. Its Grand Prix white paint looks fantastic at the start of the video, but underneath, while the 911 is clearly in great condition, it’s nowhere near as shiny and shows a typical build up of grime the comes from being used and enjoyed.
Dry ice blasting is a way of cleaning parts without any of the abrasion you get using traditional media blasting – and without the associated mess, too. It works by sending a stream of dry ice pellets, the solid form of carbon dioxide, through a hose under high pressure. When the pellets hit a surface they turn to a gas, gently removing any dirt, which simply falls to the ground.
The floor, exhaust heat exchangers and engine and transmission cases come up beautifully, although it looks like the owner might have some minor oil leaks to attend to if he wants them to stay that way. But the most striking change is to the shock absorbers, whose original red color is uncovered as mountains of caked-on dirt and grease is vanished. Eight minutes (of video) later, the underside of the 911, much like my mind, is spotless.