Dry Ice Cleaning

[HobieMarty]

What is the consensus on this? Anyone tried it? Has anyone on here thought of it as a viable stand alone business or maybe combine it with other means of detail work?
Been thinking about it as a business. Start up is a bit pricey but dang, everything is these days. Just ponderin.

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[mgatepi]

Had a start up happen here in Dayton. PCA did a Tech session at the business. Beautiful place... someone invested big $$$$....... lasted about a year. GONE.
I think they priced themselves out of the market and really did not look at the big picture when it came to creating a business model.

[cstreit]

I’ve seen it do amazing things on old cars. Years of grime gone in minutes.

[herr_oberst]

Probably makes most sense as an additional service to a successful, existing business rather than a standalone startup. And, yes. it is a very amazing process...

[1990C4S]

There's probably more money in the 'machinery' side than the 'car' side.

Monthly maintenance, cleaning grease, crap, weld slag, etc. Not much fun....

[David]

I think it does OK on cars. I have not been impressed on gas turbine rotors so I don't recommend it to customers.

[HobieMarty]

I used to work in injection mold and the company I worked for used to clean the molds with a dry ice machine like a "Cold Jet" set up. It was a pretty amazing process.

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[jcommin]

Originally Posted by HobieMarty

I used to work in injection mold and the company I worked for used to clean the molds with a dry ice machine like a "Cold Jet" set up. It was a pretty amazing process.

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Yes, ice is used in the plastic and rubber injection molding industry. Cold Jet is a major brand. High air consumption to use it. It is used primarily when the mold is in use and you don't want to pull it fop a major cleaning. It is a quick way to keep the mold in production.

[jyl]

A friend of mine has just started a dry ice blasting business for cars. His target customer seems to be high-end collectors, the ones with many high-buck vintage cars who will pay $1,000-$2,000 to have the undercarriage blasted with amazing results. As he's just started, I don't know if he'll succeed, and I haven't asked his start-up cost.

Seems to me you'll blast a car once, and never see it again, because these cars are basically not driven enough to be repeat customers. So you'd better be in an area with a whole lot of this sort of collector car, and have the inclination and social skills to get in tight with all the formal and informal collector car groups. Your facility should be able to handle having very high-value cars driven or shipped to you and securely stored until their wealthy owner has time to pick it up.

Not different from other shops that specialize in high-buck collector cars - except that they will make five figures in revenue per car, and you're making low four. It would be good to offer add-on services - detailing seems the obvious one.

[wilnj]

Originally Posted by jyl

Seems to me you'll blast a car once, and never see it again, because these cars are basically not driven enough to be repeat customers.

Correct. I see this as something a car might see once in its lifetime.

Owned from new, a car with an owner willing to spend this much on a cleaning will never get dirty enough to warrant it.

A used car with a new owner looking for a clean baseline may do this once and then never warrant it again because he’ll then fall into the group above.

[rattlsnak]

Hobie, ATL Porsche Enthusiasts is hosting an open house at Dry Ice Detailing Pros in ATL this Sat at 10 am. Might want to go check that out..

[asphaltgambler]

Good equipment is very expensive from my understanding, like $50K plus not to mention the huge air volume needed to drive it. I'm not talking about a commercial auto shop air compressor, more like the ones that are on a trailer that power large construction sites.....

Not sure what the ROI is, but you'll have consumables with the dry ice, and pay some young guy to do the blasting, so there's the labor cost.....

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by David

I think it does OK on cars. I have not been impressed on gas turbine rotors so I don't recommend it to customers.

I have a patent for using it for cleaning gas turbine compressors while in use.

[peppy]

I had looked into it for cleaning restaurant equipment. I found it to be too expensive for what I needed.

[G50]

I got an estimate for my car, which isn’t very dirty.

$3,000. I’ve seen some invoices posted on BaT, and that’s about the lowest I’ve seen.

Idk how big the market is for $3,000+ cleaning of the bottom of cars.

[wildthing]

I paid 200 bucks for steam cleaning the bottom of the 911. 300 if I wanted the top included. Someone quoted me $800 for dry ice. No thanks.

[stealthn]

We have a really nice wrenching shop here you can rent lefts from, they also have a bay for dry ice, It’s $239 per hour to rent.

[svandamme]

Car flippers use em
take a mid range car, blast it
sell it as a mint specimen.

gotta be careful these days if you find one that looks too clean underneath..
Being that clean is no guarantee of being in mechanical clean shape.. seals and everything else may be worn..

[tdw28210]

It's pretty effective. If it is done well the results can be amazing. We have a really good shop nearby that know how to do it right. Several failed fly-by-nighters have come and gone. I watch these videos from time to time. Pretty incredible results.

[john70t]

Sounds like a niche market with a lot of overhead.
What is the customer base and is it covered already? Check around.

Can that be made mobile? (loaded van)
Charge for service area. Pay up front or P.O.S.

Those with stationary projects all apart or equipment are not going anywhere.