DonaldBuswell

Good thread. $2.00 an hour to run a 10hp screw compressor? That is insane! My 50hp screw compressor is about $14.00 a day to run along with a dust collector, all 3 phase of course, 240 on one leg and 2 120 legs.

Just to clarify some ideas here; if you're blasting and or your blaster imbeds (sp) media into the metal of your intake, find a new blaster, and or stop what you're doing. The only real PITA 928 stuff to clean in my lane is the GTS Intake, and German paint on the body. Rear K Members takes no time at all, and is perfect. All my removed S4 parts I blasted, and most of my 81 parts removed also blasted. I never anticipated a market for my cursory 'let's blast this and see how it comes out' attitude especially for the Intake manifolds. And my curiosity of that GTS intake was a quest just to see how much was inside of each manifold; old coatings. One customer I saved all his interior coating chunks and send back to him in 2x 1 gallon zip lock bags and he replied in amazement just how much material was inside each manifold.

Dry Ice seems to be pretty good option for a restorer to call upon. Problem is location, and services available. Some places have the sandblaster whom just blasts an I Beam then transitions to something aluminum...with no changing any technique or media or mind set. I feel bad for those customers.

Sadly, this business I engage in is an expensive venture, stuff to make it all work is not cheap, and, sadly too many car enthusiasts operate just on 'dreams' and that thing called 'money' and time and the reality this is always a long-term adventure. I tell people on day one when they come strolling in all joyous and happy some hard realities; can you sustain oh say $2500.00 each month for say 9-15 months? At this time I'm looking for his wife, to have a sensible talk as to why would anyone want to 'restore' a 73 Torino? No parts are made. Sure, I'll media blast it, but, no one makes replacement parts, heck you can't even get body mount bushings...this is where it gets expensive. If I was not retired Army, this 'adventure' would have killed me. Perhaps when I look around there is not too many good media blasters. There's lots of sand blasters, but...chose wisely.

SwayBar

Gran Torino was a great movie though! 😀

dr bob

TL;DR

I'm pretty sure that Greg buys power from Southern California Edison, at a much higher retail rate than you get can through the TXU competitive exchange in Texas. California's electricity deregulation program was actually written by a consortium of utilities. It's been buffed up a couple times to keep it anything but competitive at the retail level, and downright close to fraud levels at the wholesale levels. Your homeboys at Enron played the Cali deregulation rules to their significant advantage, if you look back at their practices and ultimate failure. California has the state independent system operator (CALISO) to supervise wholesale generation transmission plus distribution at the upper levels, leaving the retail end to a sort-of free market with anti-competitive rules.

I'll also suspect that your 50HP screw compressor spends a very large part of its operating life unloaded, except when you are actively blasting something. My $2/hr quesstimate for Greg assumes 100% loaded time, but no peripherals like his air dryer.


Back to your regularly-scheduled activities...

DonaldBuswell

Sounds like California government has been partaking of the Jerry Brown light 'em up and then inhale whereas he did not inhale! Not a good idea to run a compressor loaded 100% of the time.

khalloudy

I did this to my 91 GT. Highly recommended, specially if you can find a good shop to do a tier 1 cleanup.

dr bob

This isn't anything to do with Jerry Brown, as it was passed in the period between his terms as California governor. It was actually promulgated during a republican administration in Sacramento, and features terms significantly favoring the utilities over the consumers. The 100% loading assumption was to normalize to the max possible cost of running Greg's compressor. Illustrates the apples-to-oranges comparison one might miss if they looked at your $14/day number with your only fractionally loaded compressor.

The Republic of Texas has maintained an interesting independent electrical structure. They avoid federal regulation by operating no public AC electrical interconnects with neighboring states, so they fall clear of the interstate commerce rules that are the gateways to federal regulation. You have local retail vendors who own none of their own generating capacity. Instead, they buy from the wholesale market, and pay distribution fees to whoever owns the last-mile and entry connections. They essentially make their money on their billing operation only. They are allowed to contract for base-rate generation from individual generators, but must pay spot-market rates if their contracted generation can't keep up. So-called 'green' suppliers dance a thin line when they contract for wind and solar capacity, as the makeup costs can be pretty incredible when the winds fall off or the sun doesn't shine. Lots of nuances, but in the end the retail energy rates in Texas are noticeably less than those in California.

dr bob

Did you snap any 'before' and 'after' photos by chance?