Hello -
I've never detailed a single stage paint before, so I was hoping for some pointers and some product choices. It doesn't need to be show car perfect, but I want it to be nice and he wants a good coat of protection on it.
See this article,
The Secret to Removing Oxidation and Restoring a Show Car Finish to Antique Single Stage Paints
How to Test for Single Stage or Clear Coat Paint
If you want to keep it simple and safe... do the rub-out using a one-step cleaner/wax. This will clean, polish and protect the paint in one step. You won't get perfect results but you should be able to get VERY GOOD results.
Just balance your time investment to what the project is worth to you.
I posted this recommendation earlier today to another single stage thread...
http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum...ings-take-note-when-dealing-classic-cars.html
Here's the most important advice I recommend and would put into practice myself and that's get REALLY GOOD BEFORE PICTURES.
Get the hood shot before you start rubbing on the paint and make a shiny spot. You want to capture a uniform ugly appearance over the entire hood. Once you rub a spot and make it shiny and then take your before shots they'll never look as good or have the impact of a before shot when the entire surface has a uniform dull look.
Just something I've learned after years of buffing out cars and capturing and sharing the projects on the Internet. Here's an article on the topic too...
The power in the after shots is created in the before shots
This is what I would try to do with your Corvette Project... especially if I were detailing cars for money and promoting my business on the Internet...
Before
After
I'm also a little concerned about the pin-striping. Since it's not protected by any kind of clear, should I treat those areas any differently?
You need to be careful, especially if the pin striping is old. Most pin strip paint will be softer than the paint it's on and most single stage paint is softer than basecoat/clearcoat paints, especially single stage black paint.
Just work around the pin striping by hand. I recently machine buffed around pinstriping by machine but I used some special tools to do this and still had to be very careful...
The article below was about a new DeWALT rotary buffer but I used the Flex PE14 for the surgical buffing and also tested new optimum products in the process, so there's a lot of info in the below thread about a variety of topics...
Bumblebee - Testing out the NEW DeWALT DWP849X
You can tackle the paint in-between the pinstripes by hand but if the paint is hard then removing swirls is going to be hard and you have to be careful not to leave
Fingermarks behind at the same time.
A good best practice with foam pads is to hold the pad flat to the surface whenever you can hold the pad flat to the surface. In situations where you cannot hold the pad flat to the surface then as an option you can hold the pad on edge. You're choice, rub the swirls out by hand, (actually with a couple of fingers pushing against some type of applicator pad), or by machine and the risks that go along with it...
I have some 3" pads that are not actually available. I asked Eric Dunn for these late last year and have been using them with great results. You can also see I'm using an
Optimum Optimum Double-Sided Rotary Adapter attached to a
2-3/4 inch Hook & Loop Rotary Backing Plate with these small rotary buffer pads.
rops: