Suburban Paint Correction using Optimum Hyper Compound and Hyper Polish

Mister B

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Last month my neighbor asked me if I could buff out his Suburban and get the paint looking good again. He did not want a full detail. He only wanted the exterior paint worked on.

After it was washed I took some pictures to show the general condition of the vehicle. There was a lot of swirls and random scratches throughout the entire vehicle.

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Next I pulled it into the garage and set up my halogen lights to start inspecting the paint surface.

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As you can see here the hood is black and does not match the color of the rest of the vehicle. He hit a deer last year and bought a used hood from the junk yard as a replacement. You can also see the hood has extreme swirling and holograms. This was the worst panel of the entire vehicle. In addition to the swirls and holograms I could feel heavy overspray on all of the horizontal surfaces and moderate overspray on the vertical panels on the entire vehicle. He has been rebuilding an early 60’s Volvo in his garage and despite him pulling the Suburban out of the garage during painting, obviously some paint overspray made it to his suburban. So I clayed the entire vehicle with Meguiar’s blue mild clay and Last touch 1:1.

After I finished claying I wanted to do a test spot on the hood. I was running low on M105 so I decided to use the Optimum Hyper Compound and Optimum Hyper Polish that I received from Autogeek back in August. So I started my test spot with my PC7424XP Lake Country orange flat pad and Optimum Hyper Compound followed up by Lake Country white flat pad and Optimum Hyper Polish.

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Considering this was a junk yard hood with poor paint condition I think the test spot turned out pretty good, so I continued with the same process on the rest of the hood and then pulled the vehicle outside to take an after shot of the hood.

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I pulled the vehicle back into the garage and began the same process of compounding with Optimum Hyper Compound followed by polishing with Optimum Hyper Polish to the rest of the vehicle.

I started with the front driver side fender. You can see the difference between the polished fender and the untouched driver door.

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Close up.

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And the finished fender.

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Drivers side door before.

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Drivers side door after

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Passenger side rear door polished next to the untouched passenger side front door.

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Both passenger front and rear doors finished.

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The metallic really popped now.

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After I was done polishing the entire vehicle I cleaned the glass with Meguiar’s Detailer Line glass cleaner, machine applied a coat of Meguiar’s #26 High Tech Yellow Wax with my PC and Meguiar’s W9006 Soft buff foam finishing pad and then dressed the tires with Poorboy’s Bold N Bright.

Here is the finished product.

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I then pulled the vehicle outside for some shots before my neighbor came over to pick it up. It was getting late and the sun was already setting, so no sun shots.

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Overall it came out pretty nice and my neighbor was extremely happy, which is the important part.

Thanks for looking.
 
That color really transforms when polished. My bro in laws pick up is the same color, when I polished it they about crapped at how much better it looked. My sis in law never liked the color before that, now she loves it.

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Excellent job on that beast of a vehicle. I really need to get me some hyper compound and polish to try.
 
Great job...I've been hearing complaints about the cheap spray nozzles on the 2 Optimum products you used. That is the primary reason why I have not gone the spray route. Have they improved on that..?...
 
Excellent job on that beast of a vehicle. I really need to get me some hyper compound and polish to try.

:iagree: Nice save. I also am going to have to try this stuff one day. Especially considering Optimum Warehouse is like 5 miles from me :hungry:
 
I've been hearing complaints about the cheap spray nozzles on the 2 Optimum products you used. That is the primary reason why I have not gone the spray route. Have they improved on that..?...

The sprayers was my only complaint when using these two products. The idea of a sprayable product is nice, but the sprayers did not work that great for me. Plus they were kind of messy when using a full spray on a small 5.5" pad.
 
Last month my neighbor asked me if I could buff out his Suburban and get the paint looking good again. He did not want a full detail. He only wanted the exterior paint worked on.

With that excellent result I'd be surprised if your neighbor doesn't come back for the interior and finishing touches! :xyxthumbs:

TL
 
Wow, awesome turnaround! How long would you say that took you in total?
 
Wow, awesome turnaround! How long would you say that took you in total?

I don't remember exactly how many hours I had in it. I worked on it several hours a day over a 3 day period. I would say I probably had roughly 12 hours or so in it.
 
With that excellent result I'd be surprised if your neighbor doesn't come back for the interior and finishing touches! :xyxthumbs:

TL

Thanks, Maybe. He did say it looks so good he won't want to drive it now. :D
 
Great work! :props:
What a huge difference now, he must of loved it.


How many mpg that thing gets?
 
Great work! :props:
What a huge difference now, he must of loved it.


How many mpg that thing gets?

Thanks, not sure what the MPG is. It's a 3/4 ton, so I can't imagine it is real good.
 
Nice save, looks like someone buffed it using the steel wool rotary buffer grinding pads...

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Good example of taking the paint to it's maximum potential!


"Taking your car's paint to it's maximum potential"


:xyxthumbs:

Thanks, Mike. Yea, I don't know what was used on that hood, but it was the worst one I had ever seen. :)

Being that I am new to the rotary I decided to use the rotary with the Optimum wool pad and the red Optimum foam pad with the Hyper Compound and Hyper Polish to polish out the hood and I had pretty good results, but when I moved on to the vertical side panels, the rotary just wanted to walk all over the place on me. I could not keep it smooth, so I said the heck with it and switched back to the PC for the rest of the vehicle. Do you have any tips for better handling the rotary on the vertical panels? No matter what I did, I just was not happy with how it was handling.
 
Did you use side bar? A lot of people like using their machine without sidebars or handle, because they can control the machine a lot better and put even amount of pressure onto the car.
 
Did you use side bar? A lot of people like using their machine without sidebars or handle, because they can control the machine a lot better and put even amount of pressure onto the car.

Yea, I used the D-handle. I also held it by just the head a few times. It was a little better, but still a little unwieldly for me. I guess I just need more practice. It's the cheap harbor freight rotary. It's not the best rotary, but it was worth it even if I mostly only use it for cleaning my pads.
 
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