Tar Plant Accident

Very very lucky that no people were under the pipe when it blew.
 
Great opportunity for you!

Reminds me of the season's first snow storm back in my body shop days in Ohio.

Nothing like mother nature to generate work... Or in your case, this industrial accident.

Hope you get a lot of repeat customers and referrals out of your efforts.
 
Small update. Got another vehicle done today. The weather here is not the greatest and temps were in the 20's all day, but I did manage to get this Tahoe done. Sorry the after pics are not the greatest, I was in a rush to get the vehicle back by the time the owner got off work.

















 
Incredible workmanship.
The employees are probably hoping for funky rain every year.

I am hearing detailing conversations at the water cooler from here.
 
wow looks great. sounds like a sticky situation you had their.... LOL
 
Great work!! Good turnaround on the vehicles.

I work at a roofing manufacturing plant. I work around hot asphalt every day. Needless to say,it's nothing to take lightly! You have to be careful. Even a very little bit on you will burn you real good. I'm so thankful nobody was injured in that pipe rupture. I have offloaded many,many,many tankers of hot oil! My supervisor got burned priming a pump several years ago,and had to have skin grafts. The worst thing though was a tanker driver turning his truck over coming to the plant,and he was eventually covered in asphalt. :(

We use tons of orange degreaser specifically Zep Big Orange E in aerosol cans. I wouldn't use it on paint though!! It is STOUT. It will easily dissolve oil/asphalt. We keep a little sand on the floors instead of being spotless. Spills on the floor will generally pull up if you have sand down.

The totaled vehicles almost look like victims of bad vinyl wraps.
 
Travis, if you had the guts to take this job, you can consider yourself a Detailer, with a capital D. Wow!
 
Simply amazing! great work! I'm sure you will get a ton of return business with that work!
 
I would give you three THUMBS-UP....!!!
 
tmurph01;
Excellent job, and thanks for sharing.
Could you please enlighten us what worked and what didn't work as far as products and techniques used.
Again, thank you.
 
sayroger said:
wow looks great. sounds like a sticky situation you had their.... LOL
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Thanks! And yes, quite sticky...

AllenK said:
Great work!! Good turnaround on the vehicles.
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Thanks!

RPM_BR said:
Travis, if you had the guts to take this job, you can consider yourself a Detailer, with a capital D. Wow!
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Thanks! The funny part is 2 other "detailers" in the area didn't even bother looking at the cars. They heard what happened an immediately said no... their loss... my win!

octane said:
Simply amazing! great work! I'm sure you will get a ton of return business with that work!
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Thanks! A few of them have already said this Spring that they want to set up another detail and interiors.

JMP said:
I would give you three THUMBS-UP....!!!
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Thanks!

expdetailing said:
tmurph01;
Excellent job, and thanks for sharing.
Could you please enlighten us what worked and what didn't work as far as products and techniques used.
Again, thank you.
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Thanks! I learned early that tar removers and degreasers simply do not work on this particular compound of tar. I found a few products that they recommended and have used before, but they all seemed a bit too harsh for me to risk putting on paint. My method was actually to power wash as much as I could off. After that, it was a trio of clay barring, buffing, and good old fashioned scrubbing to get the tar off. All the cars require a good paint correction after this, but it has been working out great so far. Averaging a car a day when I get a chance to detail. 5 down about 10-15 to go...
 
Knocked another one out today. The paint and condition was already rough on this van, even before the accident. Overall, it turned out pretty good.

Before


After


Before


After


Before


After


 
Wow.... Kinda makes me want to park near tar plants from now on.... From the looks of these results people are getting back brand new cars! Great job!
 
tmurph01 said:
They had a pipe rupture, which ended up raining tar on everything, including the vehicles in the parking lot. Two of the trucks will be totaled and you will see them below.
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would like to know what city and state you're located at... the two trucks in the photo did not need to be totaled. from the photo, 6 hours per vehicle and they would be 100% Tar free.

dry ice blasting
chris<pixelmonkey>:D
 
Congratulations on seeing an opportunity that others did not. Great work.
 
pixelmonkey said:
would like to know what city and state you're located at... the two trucks in the photo did not need to be totaled. from the photo, 6 hours per vehicle and they would be 100% Tar free.

dry ice blasting
chris<pixelmonkey>:D
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Eastern Panhandle of WV. They talked about dry ice blasting, but ultimately their insurance company made the call before they could explore that option. Also, as hot as that tar was, I would very seriously be worried about the condition on the paint and plastic...


AZ Mike said:
Congratulations on seeing an opportunity that others did not. Great work.
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Thanks!

Detailing by M said:
so what exactly did you use for your presoak?
and you didn't use steam?
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Presoak consisted of Tar-X followed by a degreaser. I found following up the tar-x with degreaser actually helped when power washing to reduce streaks and smears.
 
pixelmonkey said:
would like to know what city and state you're located at... the two trucks in the photo did not need to be totaled. from the photo, 6 hours per vehicle and they would be 100% Tar free.

dry ice blasting
chris<pixelmonkey>:D
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I'm going to have to look into this. I've had a few tar removal jobs that just stunk. Dry Ice Blasting looks like an easy way to fix this.

From W I K I: (this is a bad word here?)
Method;
Dry-ice blasting involves propelling pellets at extremely high speeds. The actual dry-ice pellets are quite soft, and much less dense than other media used in blast-cleaning (i.e. sand or plastic pellets). Upon impact, the pellet sublimates almost immediately, transferring minimal kinetic energy to the surface on impact and producing minimal abrasion. The sublimation process absorbs a large volume of heat from the surface, producing shear stresses due to thermal shock.[2] This is assumed to improve cleaning as the top layer of dirt or contaminant is expected to transfer more heat than the underlying substrate and flake off more easily. The efficiency and effectiveness of this process depends on the thermal conductivity of the substrate and contaminant. The rapid change in state from solid to gas also causes microscopic shock waves, which are also thought to assist in removing the contaminant.
 
Those first two trucks looked pretty bad. Really want to see pics of the two that we're totaled.
 
First great work. What would be good is to write your whole process down and keep good records. Another thing would be to get a small video camera and record from start to finish. That would be a good advertising tool.

Ed
 
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