richy
New member
- Mar 27, 2007
- 5,158
- 0
I honestly don't know who was more excited for me to do this car: its owner and his wife or me! We had scheduled it about a month ago. It had some marks that were going to be too deep to compound, so they came by and I applied some touch up to the areas to let it cure for as long as it possibly could. This car is amazing! Every time I started it (I was looking for any old excuse, LOL) it just gave me a big ole smile as the sound of Detroit muscle can only do!
Finally the day arrived. This was going to be a big job. I quoted 20 hours and ended up more like 23 or 23.5. Wheels were coming off and getting OG and the whole car was getting a 3 stage correction.
Here it is as it arrived:
First up was the wheels. I tried to get as much done on them while they were still on so I didn't have to use my power washer inside the garage.
The barrels were done with Tarminator.
The faces were done with Zep Citrus.
The tires? I usually use Zep Purple but I wanted to try something different so I tried out Zep 505. Boy, do I EVER like this stuff! No caustic smell like the ZP and it cleaned the tires very well. The first bottle I used at 100%. Even at that strength, it rinsed off easily. I was fighting the darkness, but here you can see I cleaned the left side with the 505 and the right side with the Purple:
Here is the left side after rinsing:
And here is the right (ZP) side after rinsing:
I tried it later cut 2:1 and it worked just as well. I'm going to cut it at the same 4:1 and see how it goes at another time. This stuff is cheap at under $9/bottle and works great on tires!
The wells were cleaned with ZC.
Next the car was foamed with a strong mix of DG 901 and Dawn.
The car was then brought inside and placed under my "Going before God" lights which showed the following:
As you can see, there were lots of scratches on every single panel. I had not even clayed the vehicle yet.
The next step was the wheel removal. Each corner was jacked up and the wheel removed. I gave each one another quick cleaning but I had done a pretty good job already on them. The interesting thing about these wheels are they are powder coated.
The wells were cleaned with ONR and then dressed with PERL at 100%. The calipers were cleaned with ONR and then coated with OG. Here is a before shot of the well:
The wheel itself was wiped down with ERASER and then coated with OG. The owner came by to check out the progress. It was great for him to see the amount of work involved in doing this step. Here is the well afterward:
After re-installing the wheels and torquing them to spec, I had 7 hours into the car already!
The owner had a few specific requests regarding the job, namely not to coat the decals and not to dress the tires. This means I had to be very careful taping off all the decals to avoid damage while polishing as well as not to get OG on them. Here is the car taped up and ready to polish:
I had mentioned about filling in a few spots with touch up. There was a nasty spot on the roof. Here it is ready for leveling:
That spot was actually an impact from something. Not only was it chipped, but dented too. Bummer.
Now the part I was looking forward to. This paint ended up being very hard. I tried the usual and kept upping my game until I got to what finally worked to remove the scratches: Power Gloss and my Tuf Buff black wool with my Dyna at about 2000-2200 rpm. I was getting that Pony warm! Of course the PG was marking the paint in its own way, so that was followed by PFW and M105 with the rotary for a quick pass. The next step was Megs D300 with a yellow B/S and my Flex at 6. Wow. That made it really nice. I swear D300 has a darkening effect on black. I've seen it several times. I then went for the kill with a green B/S and Opt Hyper Polish. The filled in spots were leveled by wet sanding.
One cool thing that I've never been able to do before is to actually show the transition to a customer. They came by on Saturday and I demonstrated three steps on the rear 1/4: TB wool and M105 followed by the D300 and the HP. (The sides were a bit easier to correct than the top surfaces). It was so very cool to see their reaction as each step unfolded. I showed them the D300 stage and said "Would you stop here?" They seemed pleased with how it looked. Then I showed them what the OHP did next and they were just blown away! I was very happy I got to share that with them!!
A few other (quite a few) touch ups were done as I went around the car. The tail pipes were hand polished by M205. The headlights and tail lights were also polished. Doing such heavy correction made a mess, so it got a very thorough ONR clean up. I followed that with an ERASER wipe down.
For protection, the glass got Opt Glass coating and the paint got OG. The trim was done last with WETS. The tires were not dressed per customer request. The tape was removed and the residue cleaned up. The following day it was wiped down with UWW for slickness.
Finally the day arrived. This was going to be a big job. I quoted 20 hours and ended up more like 23 or 23.5. Wheels were coming off and getting OG and the whole car was getting a 3 stage correction.
Here it is as it arrived:
First up was the wheels. I tried to get as much done on them while they were still on so I didn't have to use my power washer inside the garage.
The barrels were done with Tarminator.
The faces were done with Zep Citrus.
The tires? I usually use Zep Purple but I wanted to try something different so I tried out Zep 505. Boy, do I EVER like this stuff! No caustic smell like the ZP and it cleaned the tires very well. The first bottle I used at 100%. Even at that strength, it rinsed off easily. I was fighting the darkness, but here you can see I cleaned the left side with the 505 and the right side with the Purple:
Here is the left side after rinsing:
And here is the right (ZP) side after rinsing:
I tried it later cut 2:1 and it worked just as well. I'm going to cut it at the same 4:1 and see how it goes at another time. This stuff is cheap at under $9/bottle and works great on tires!
The wells were cleaned with ZC.
Next the car was foamed with a strong mix of DG 901 and Dawn.
The car was then brought inside and placed under my "Going before God" lights which showed the following:
As you can see, there were lots of scratches on every single panel. I had not even clayed the vehicle yet.
The next step was the wheel removal. Each corner was jacked up and the wheel removed. I gave each one another quick cleaning but I had done a pretty good job already on them. The interesting thing about these wheels are they are powder coated.
The wells were cleaned with ONR and then dressed with PERL at 100%. The calipers were cleaned with ONR and then coated with OG. Here is a before shot of the well:
The wheel itself was wiped down with ERASER and then coated with OG. The owner came by to check out the progress. It was great for him to see the amount of work involved in doing this step. Here is the well afterward:
After re-installing the wheels and torquing them to spec, I had 7 hours into the car already!
The owner had a few specific requests regarding the job, namely not to coat the decals and not to dress the tires. This means I had to be very careful taping off all the decals to avoid damage while polishing as well as not to get OG on them. Here is the car taped up and ready to polish:
I had mentioned about filling in a few spots with touch up. There was a nasty spot on the roof. Here it is ready for leveling:
That spot was actually an impact from something. Not only was it chipped, but dented too. Bummer.
Now the part I was looking forward to. This paint ended up being very hard. I tried the usual and kept upping my game until I got to what finally worked to remove the scratches: Power Gloss and my Tuf Buff black wool with my Dyna at about 2000-2200 rpm. I was getting that Pony warm! Of course the PG was marking the paint in its own way, so that was followed by PFW and M105 with the rotary for a quick pass. The next step was Megs D300 with a yellow B/S and my Flex at 6. Wow. That made it really nice. I swear D300 has a darkening effect on black. I've seen it several times. I then went for the kill with a green B/S and Opt Hyper Polish. The filled in spots were leveled by wet sanding.
One cool thing that I've never been able to do before is to actually show the transition to a customer. They came by on Saturday and I demonstrated three steps on the rear 1/4: TB wool and M105 followed by the D300 and the HP. (The sides were a bit easier to correct than the top surfaces). It was so very cool to see their reaction as each step unfolded. I showed them the D300 stage and said "Would you stop here?" They seemed pleased with how it looked. Then I showed them what the OHP did next and they were just blown away! I was very happy I got to share that with them!!
A few other (quite a few) touch ups were done as I went around the car. The tail pipes were hand polished by M205. The headlights and tail lights were also polished. Doing such heavy correction made a mess, so it got a very thorough ONR clean up. I followed that with an ERASER wipe down.
For protection, the glass got Opt Glass coating and the paint got OG. The trim was done last with WETS. The tires were not dressed per customer request. The tape was removed and the residue cleaned up. The following day it was wiped down with UWW for slickness.
rops:
