richy
New member
- Mar 27, 2007
- 5,158
- 0
You wonder sometimes when you book a vehicle without seeing it first what kind of job it's going to be. This truck is 13 years old and is a big, long-box, 4 door hunk of real estate. Lots of area to polish here! But, I'm getting ahead of myself. This customer had originally talked about using Finest on the F150 but then due to the size, there was going to be an increased cost due to the area needing to be coated. In addition, when he brought it to me, especially with the key scratch, it was going to be many hours of work so the cost was starting to add up. He ended up deciding on a double coat of Americoat and a 2 step correction process.
Here it is as it arrived:
One of the other issues with this truck is that he had just removed a pin stripe that had been on there for the last 13 years and needed the evidence of it to go away. That was not going to turn out to be as easy as I had hoped.
The passenger side of the box had some bad scratches on the wheel opening mouldings as well as a fairly long key scratch:
The paint has its fair share of swirls too:
The chrome looked decent and I was looking forward to seeing it turn around:
The chrome on the wheels was also very nice and in good shape for being that age and stock!
First up was the wheels, tires, etc.
The wheels faces and barrels were cleaned with Megs WB.
They were then shot with Zep Citrus and cleaned with a wash mitt and DG 901.
The tires were cleaned with Zep 505 and LATA.
The wells were cleaned with LATA.
The truck was then hand washed with DG 901.
It was then washed a 2nd time with IronX paste.
It was then brought inside and blown off with the Master Blaster and clayed with a Speedy Prep Towel.
The scratch on the passenger side box got filled with touch up to allow it to dry over night.
I had to stop there as I was going to see the Australian Pink Floyd show that night (INCREDIBLE!!!!)
The following day I began the correction process. I wanted something that would do a great job but also with some velocity due to the amount of vehicle I needed to do. I had quoted him 16-20 hours to do the complete job. My TB black wool pad seemed to be making a dust storm for some reason so I tried the Megs polishing mf +M205 + Rupes 21. That was really working well on this paint. A few times a 2nd pass was needed, but not often. Not only were the pads caking up with product (normal) but they were also getting dirty! I cleaned them a few times with LATA and spun them out to get back in business. That stage was followed up with a white B/S pad + Ameridepth + Flex 3401. I haven' t used this product much and it was really following the first step well. I was very pleased at the turnaround being created. The chrome was polished with the Ameridepth stage and responded well although again got my pads dirty. The wheels were polished via yellow foam pad + Squeaky Clean.
The pin stripe was first attacked with Tarminator and a mf and then polished as above. I even tried a more aggressive approach to that area, but it was no more effective than what I was already doing.
The key fill-in area was wet sanded with 1500 and 3G grit Megs sanding discs and my GG 3" DA. Here's what it looked like after sanding:
And here's the same area after the a/m 2 step process:
The paint, chrome and all glass except for the windshield got a double coat of Americoat. The windshield got Fly-By-30. The tires were shot with OB @ 100% through my mini air gun and leveled. The trim got DLux. After all that I came in at 18 hours. Here's how it looked in the late day diminishing sun:
Hood Reflection:
Passenger side of box:
I manually focused to show there was still a small remnant of the scratch, but it was very difficult to see. I was happy with the outcome, but more importantly, so was he.
About the only sun shot I could get:
Dlux looking great!
Last 2 are of the box cover:
Thanks for looking!
Here it is as it arrived:
One of the other issues with this truck is that he had just removed a pin stripe that had been on there for the last 13 years and needed the evidence of it to go away. That was not going to turn out to be as easy as I had hoped.
The passenger side of the box had some bad scratches on the wheel opening mouldings as well as a fairly long key scratch:
The paint has its fair share of swirls too:
The chrome looked decent and I was looking forward to seeing it turn around:
The chrome on the wheels was also very nice and in good shape for being that age and stock!
First up was the wheels, tires, etc.
The wheels faces and barrels were cleaned with Megs WB.
They were then shot with Zep Citrus and cleaned with a wash mitt and DG 901.
The tires were cleaned with Zep 505 and LATA.
The wells were cleaned with LATA.
The truck was then hand washed with DG 901.
It was then washed a 2nd time with IronX paste.
It was then brought inside and blown off with the Master Blaster and clayed with a Speedy Prep Towel.
The scratch on the passenger side box got filled with touch up to allow it to dry over night.
I had to stop there as I was going to see the Australian Pink Floyd show that night (INCREDIBLE!!!!)
The following day I began the correction process. I wanted something that would do a great job but also with some velocity due to the amount of vehicle I needed to do. I had quoted him 16-20 hours to do the complete job. My TB black wool pad seemed to be making a dust storm for some reason so I tried the Megs polishing mf +M205 + Rupes 21. That was really working well on this paint. A few times a 2nd pass was needed, but not often. Not only were the pads caking up with product (normal) but they were also getting dirty! I cleaned them a few times with LATA and spun them out to get back in business. That stage was followed up with a white B/S pad + Ameridepth + Flex 3401. I haven' t used this product much and it was really following the first step well. I was very pleased at the turnaround being created. The chrome was polished with the Ameridepth stage and responded well although again got my pads dirty. The wheels were polished via yellow foam pad + Squeaky Clean.
The pin stripe was first attacked with Tarminator and a mf and then polished as above. I even tried a more aggressive approach to that area, but it was no more effective than what I was already doing.
The key fill-in area was wet sanded with 1500 and 3G grit Megs sanding discs and my GG 3" DA. Here's what it looked like after sanding:
And here's the same area after the a/m 2 step process:
The paint, chrome and all glass except for the windshield got a double coat of Americoat. The windshield got Fly-By-30. The tires were shot with OB @ 100% through my mini air gun and leveled. The trim got DLux. After all that I came in at 18 hours. Here's how it looked in the late day diminishing sun:
Hood Reflection:
Passenger side of box:
I manually focused to show there was still a small remnant of the scratch, but it was very difficult to see. I was happy with the outcome, but more importantly, so was he.
About the only sun shot I could get:
Dlux looking great!
Last 2 are of the box cover:
Thanks for looking!
