Wills.WindowsAndWheels
New member
- Oct 31, 2009
- 1,682
- 0
As the title reads, It all started with a scratch...
A bit of background on how this detail came about.
We had done a polish out on a beefed up Camaro SS (aka Blue Monster) that had been over sprayed at one of our bigger Chevy dealerships in Az. The owner worked in the performance division of this Chevy Dealership, called his detailer back in Cali and asked if he knew of anyone in Arizona who could help get his ride back into shape. His Cali detailer came up with our name
Well, we did our thing on it and he was very impressed to say the least...so impressed in fact, that the DAY AFTER we did his Camaro, he was doing service for a certain Corvette...and to put it in his terms, he told the owner that his car was "Hammered!" and that he needed to call us lol. He had noticed especially a certain eye sore of a scratch on the upper part of the drivers door and then went into the rear quarter panel.
The owner called us the same day and we eventually set up a time for us to run out to take a look at the damage in person. Well, it wasn't pretty, that was for sure lol, but we thought we could save his paint...because the other option he was considering was repainting the whole car...a costly venture to say the least!
We booked a date...got out there early the morning of the detail and looked at the mess we had to try to correct.
Here she was, not looking too horribly bad from this angle!
But when we swung around to look at it right in the sun...i swore it looked worse than i remembered when we bid it lol.
While we were hoping it was mostly just ground in dirt, we had a lurking feeling that the paint was just THAT bad. And if you look at this, you'll know why:
Painful, i know. Had a few bugs splattered along the front as well:
....and rock chips:
The hood just killed us with the condition it was in....the roof and trunk were the same...the horizontal panels had REALLY taken a beating:
The tires and rims were filthy, coated with a good one or two hundred layers of Arizona clay and dirt lol:
Nasty stuff here....
So naturally, thats where we began:
Next it was onto cleaning the dirty and dull paint:
Foam er' up!
The bad thing was, after cleaning...the paint looked just as dull...many of the spots remained, as they were etched in (not horribly deep but still there nevertheless), very bad oxidation was apparent and now that the swirls weren't being FILLED with the dirt lol...they were very visible:
We pulled it into the garage and went on to decontaminate the car with the Auto Scrub:
This helped to get rid of the horrible textured feel that the paint had to it, but it was still EXTREMELY dry and 'grabby'. The paint still looked horrible and we were, in all honesty, a bit concerned. While we were hoping it was bad oxidation, the thought of possible clear coat failure was plaguing the back of our minds...
After cleaning the layers of dirt off it became more and more apparent that this wasn't just baked on dirt by any means. The owner had come out and asked how things were looking, we told him our concerns but let him know we wouldn't know for sure one way or the other how it would turn out until we did our test spot.
So, we taped down the middle of the hood, set up our pads, polishes and polishers and went at it.
The results were apparent even in the shade of the garage:
Dani was taping off some things on the passengers side after I had finished my test spot...she looked up at me and asked how it came out....i just had a big stupid grin on my face...she replied "THATS what i wanted to hear!" The owner came back into the garage a few minutes later and asked what the verdict was....I just had him stand where i was at so he could see exactly what i was seeing...he was very pleased to say the least!
Knowing all was good in the world again, we continued on. This wasn't a speedy restoration by any means (what proper one is?), but it was going relatively well, all things considered. Just the compounding step using a mix of D300 and 105 on a Megs MF Cutting pad was giving massive improvements. I found myself leaning more towards the D300 than the 105, because with paint this dry, the D300 compound removed easiER, but still not easy lol.
Via Kevin Brown's advice that he gave me a few months back, i still had my trusty exact fit PAD (not plate lol). When i told him how many backing plates i already owned, he said if i didn't want to mess around with buying another one (his exact fit), that i could just careful cut a Megs cutting disc down to size to fit my backing plate i already had...thus increasing my cutting power and making 'edging' much more efficient as well:
Gloss was coming back!
IPA wipe downs were VERY important on this job. While the paint would appear to be in tip-top shape after compounding and then polishing with Megs 205, some spots...especially the edges..revealed they were still oxidized and very dull looking when an IPA wipe down was done. We had to be as careful as possible to make sure we didn't miss a lingering dull spot that appeared to be ok, but was really just holding onto some of the polish. Just a quick bit of info i thought i'd share.
We were working front to back...after finally making it to the back....we had some serious water spots to deal with behind the license plate:
A bit of background on how this detail came about.
We had done a polish out on a beefed up Camaro SS (aka Blue Monster) that had been over sprayed at one of our bigger Chevy dealerships in Az. The owner worked in the performance division of this Chevy Dealership, called his detailer back in Cali and asked if he knew of anyone in Arizona who could help get his ride back into shape. His Cali detailer came up with our name
Well, we did our thing on it and he was very impressed to say the least...so impressed in fact, that the DAY AFTER we did his Camaro, he was doing service for a certain Corvette...and to put it in his terms, he told the owner that his car was "Hammered!" and that he needed to call us lol. He had noticed especially a certain eye sore of a scratch on the upper part of the drivers door and then went into the rear quarter panel.
The owner called us the same day and we eventually set up a time for us to run out to take a look at the damage in person. Well, it wasn't pretty, that was for sure lol, but we thought we could save his paint...because the other option he was considering was repainting the whole car...a costly venture to say the least!
We booked a date...got out there early the morning of the detail and looked at the mess we had to try to correct.
Here she was, not looking too horribly bad from this angle!
But when we swung around to look at it right in the sun...i swore it looked worse than i remembered when we bid it lol.
While we were hoping it was mostly just ground in dirt, we had a lurking feeling that the paint was just THAT bad. And if you look at this, you'll know why:
Painful, i know. Had a few bugs splattered along the front as well:
....and rock chips:
The hood just killed us with the condition it was in....the roof and trunk were the same...the horizontal panels had REALLY taken a beating:
The tires and rims were filthy, coated with a good one or two hundred layers of Arizona clay and dirt lol:
Nasty stuff here....
So naturally, thats where we began:
Next it was onto cleaning the dirty and dull paint:
Foam er' up!
The bad thing was, after cleaning...the paint looked just as dull...many of the spots remained, as they were etched in (not horribly deep but still there nevertheless), very bad oxidation was apparent and now that the swirls weren't being FILLED with the dirt lol...they were very visible:
We pulled it into the garage and went on to decontaminate the car with the Auto Scrub:
This helped to get rid of the horrible textured feel that the paint had to it, but it was still EXTREMELY dry and 'grabby'. The paint still looked horrible and we were, in all honesty, a bit concerned. While we were hoping it was bad oxidation, the thought of possible clear coat failure was plaguing the back of our minds...
After cleaning the layers of dirt off it became more and more apparent that this wasn't just baked on dirt by any means. The owner had come out and asked how things were looking, we told him our concerns but let him know we wouldn't know for sure one way or the other how it would turn out until we did our test spot.
So, we taped down the middle of the hood, set up our pads, polishes and polishers and went at it.
The results were apparent even in the shade of the garage:
Dani was taping off some things on the passengers side after I had finished my test spot...she looked up at me and asked how it came out....i just had a big stupid grin on my face...she replied "THATS what i wanted to hear!" The owner came back into the garage a few minutes later and asked what the verdict was....I just had him stand where i was at so he could see exactly what i was seeing...he was very pleased to say the least!
Knowing all was good in the world again, we continued on. This wasn't a speedy restoration by any means (what proper one is?), but it was going relatively well, all things considered. Just the compounding step using a mix of D300 and 105 on a Megs MF Cutting pad was giving massive improvements. I found myself leaning more towards the D300 than the 105, because with paint this dry, the D300 compound removed easiER, but still not easy lol.
Via Kevin Brown's advice that he gave me a few months back, i still had my trusty exact fit PAD (not plate lol). When i told him how many backing plates i already owned, he said if i didn't want to mess around with buying another one (his exact fit), that i could just careful cut a Megs cutting disc down to size to fit my backing plate i already had...thus increasing my cutting power and making 'edging' much more efficient as well:
Gloss was coming back!
IPA wipe downs were VERY important on this job. While the paint would appear to be in tip-top shape after compounding and then polishing with Megs 205, some spots...especially the edges..revealed they were still oxidized and very dull looking when an IPA wipe down was done. We had to be as careful as possible to make sure we didn't miss a lingering dull spot that appeared to be ok, but was really just holding onto some of the polish. Just a quick bit of info i thought i'd share.
We were working front to back...after finally making it to the back....we had some serious water spots to deal with behind the license plate:
The work you do however will have him coming back, and bringing his friends for sure. :dblthumb2: