Good weekend - Bad weekend!!
So, 7am Friday morning I set off in order to do the detail on this beautiful car. Lovely sunny day and no rain forecast for the whole weekend - which is very rare in the north west UK.
When I arrived at my friends house, he had already moved the car outside and removed all the chrome from the body, leaving me a lovely bare car to work on.
The removal of all the chrome and seeing the body work up close and outside unfortunately revealed the true condition of the paint. The majority of the paint on lower half, especially around the trim, was quite badly rusted through. The entire wheel arches were starting to rust and there are quite literally dozens and dozens of stone chips. This, coupled with the worn paint that I already knew about made me think about what could be realistically achieved with this beautiful car. So, after discussing the condition of the car with my friend, it was decided that I would just give the car a good clean and polish as best I could, rather than trying to correct the paintwork and my friend has now said that he is going to look into getting a re-spray done.
So, before I set to work, I took loads of pictures of the car so that I could compare the before and after shots.
Despite what appeared from a few feet away to be relatively clean paint, it was actually very dirty up close. I gave the car a good wash and then spot tested a small area near the rear fender with ironX. Once I was happy that it wasn't going to further damage the paint, i sprayed it all over the car and waited and WOW, it looked like someone had been slaughtered. The iron bleeding was insane, so much contamination that it was unbelievable. The car was then washed again and then dried off carefully.
Next it was taking inside and clayed all over. This in itself brought out some shine to the car, which had obviously dulled over the years in the hot Kansas sun. After claying all over, the car was then soaked in a heavy layer of Megs number 7 and left to soak overnight.
Ok, Ok I hear you say, but where are the pictures??? Bear with me, that's part of the story.
Saturday was spent with the DA and various combinations of pads & polish. As I said previously, the paint was actually in a poor condition and the limited time i had with the car meant that I decided a full correction was out of the question, so it was just a matter of doing the best I could to make the car look better until my friend can get a re spray done.
SHOW ME THE PICTURES, WHERE'S THE PICTURES - I hear you say.
Sunday was spent polishing the chrome with the DA and I was really impressed with the results. All the chrome was then put back on the car and the rubber window seals were treated and the tyres dressed with Megs endurance tyre gel and after three full days the car was looking much better, so much so that my friend's wife couldn't believe the difference.
After standing back and admiring the work, I took loads of pictures of the car so that I could come home and upload them onto Auto Geek, so that I could show you lovely people the fruits of my labour - and that's when it all went horribly wrong!!
My SD card was corrupted and the pictures were gone
I can't believe it, I am absolutely gutted. I have spent the last dozen or so hours trying to recover the lost files but the card is beyond recovery. Luckily my son came along with me on Friday and took some on his own camera, which I have asked him to email to me then I can put them up. I will also ask my friend to take some more and do the same so with any luck I may be able to upload some.
After all the help and advice from you guys, I was desperate to be able to show the results of my work on what is a truly lovely car. Hopefully I will be back later with at least a few photos to show!
plus the Werkstat acrylic kit at my disposal. Any suggestions as to which would be best for this beautiful car?
