R32 GTR skyline | zero orange peel project : 100 hours detail/body |

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cobraa

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** This detail was done in Montreal, Canada. But we do accept request all over Canada , if you wish to request our service. We are Waxxon Spa Automobile ** If you liked this detail, feel free to give us a thumb on our facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/Waxxonspa THANK YOU :)

So... what happened since 2010 when this thread/car won best of show thread from Autogeek's staff ? Well.. I simply maintained the car while the car attended some car show. The car had little respray due to new addition like greddy rear spat and M3 mirror style. I had to match the orange peel with the rest of the car but nothing major.

In 2011-12, Chemical guys gave us a free pot of Chemical Guys Celeste dettaglio V2 to thanks us for letting them use some of our pictures for their new ads. Cool! Another ''award'' from this detail :)

And there comes 2013... CATASTROPHE!! The car had his fender rolled.. However 2 fender out of 4 cracked.. leaving paint cracked and not looking too pretty.. the rear spat fitting done by the bodyshot wasnt too pretty... Long story short, about 40% of the car got resprayed! So, I didn't get to detail the car before the respray was done. Make sens right ?

Then.. the day the respray happened, the color-match was HORRIBLE!!! I mean seriously horrible... So, the painter agreed to re-do the job and apologize. However it took 3 weeks due to vacation and busy week. fast forward 3 weeks later.. I finally got to see the car repainted correctly, but with nasty orange peel :

If you don't know what orange peel are, they are pretty common when you get bodyshop work done on your car, you will get these kind of reflection from the paint. Sometimes it's worse than other and depending on the color of the car it show less or more. So think about an orange and how wavy the peel is.. and now look at these pictures:




Look closely at the reflection of the wall and the sky on the trunk.. can't you see the reflection is wavy and not clear ?

And now... does one side appears to be MUCH MORE clear than the other ?




And now here's a close up...

orange peel :



No orange peel ( or very minimal) crystal clear reflection :


To achieve this kind of finish, we need to go through an exhaustive process that takes hours to achieve. We first need to wet-sand the paint using a ''coarse'' grit ( coarse for finishing paint but not coarse if you were to perform bodyshop job like grinding paint!) to actually level the paint by knocking off the peel effect on the paint. Imagine the paint as a mountain.. every high spot is actually what we call the peel/wavy effect. What I need to do is sand those mountain/high spot to level the paint so that I obtain a paint that doesn't have any high-spot. Like this:



After that you will realize that some contamination might have stuck INTO the paint.. that's what we call ''grain''. It's actually small dust particle that get trap on the paint during the paint curing inside the paint booth. So far from what I saw.. no matter how hard the bodyshop try to avoid them, they're will always be a few trap on the paint. To correct this, you need to use another speciality tools with coarser grit paper that will knock these grits individually: ( this process can be very long!)




Once everything is done.. meaning the orange peel is removed and we achieved an uniform ''matte'' looking paint, it's time to refinish the paint using a finer coarse paper. Usually these paper will have a foam backing so they will contours the mountain instead of ''knocking them'' and leveling them. The problem with the first and second step is that the paint is very hazy/matte looking. In order to bring back the shine, you need to refinish the paint ; this means that the finer grit will be able to remove the coarser grit I just put on the paint. ( ie: If you have #1000 grit, you need a #2000 grit to remove the #1000 grit and then, you could use a #3000 or #5000 grit to remove the #2000 grit you created before). So this is how the paint looked after a #3000 grit pass:


Remember how it looked once fully polished ?


Oh gosssshh!! isn't that pretty ? Some ferrari and uber-expensive car don't even have that kind of clarity in their paint!

As you can see, the problem with wet-sanding is not to level the paint or remove the orange peel, the real challenge ( and this is what set a part the real detailer to the ''other'') is to finish the paint to a PERFECT finish without leaving any compounding haze, small dust particle, pigtail, sanding mark etc.

So after I was done with the trunk, I started working the rear fender:



And I was done for the day......................................

Well not exactly..........

1 hour later after leaving the bodyshop. this happened:








#### !!!!!!

So basicly, we had to respray the car twice to get it done, I already worked 5-6 hours into the paint and then comes this accident... The damage ?

- corner light
- headlight
- rebar
- leaking intercooler
- destroyed bumper
- bended frame


Someone offered to repair the fiberglass bumper, he said he would do the rought part and then a bodyshop would just have to sand it and put some body filler and prep it:




Well.. after doing 3 different bodyshop, not one wanted to work with this bumper, they all said the repair was too rought and not worth going over. they would have to start over.. Oh great! More time and money wasted.

Then someone offered to trade a headlight to help the owner repair his car. Next thing we knew is that Nissan decided to make 2 different type of headlight in the little 5 yr timespan the R32 existed. As you can see here, notice the DRL not the same and one take H3C while the other take H1:



So while the headlight were out, I was asked to paint the inside of the light black instead of chrome to achieve a meaner look:

Looking prettier isn't ?




It took me about 5 hours to do.. remove the cover, polish inside the cover with a glass polish, polish the outside with a glass polish and glass polishing pad, sand the chrome and give multiple coat of paint, then I had to re-seal the cover with urethane we use at my shop for windshield. You think we were done hen!??!

Well no... i left the headlight on my drying machine and went to grab my camera to take some pictures, when I was in my room I heard a big '' smash''.... yes... one headlight fall off the drying machine and the cover being glass.. broke again!!! Believe it or not.. I had to supply another glass cover because it was totally my fault.. Basicly, I didn't make a penny doing this mod..

Rebar was bought at a JDM shop, Intercooler were upgraded to a bigger Greddy unit, corner light were replaced for a pair of smoked clear corner by jdmgarage.

Now into the bend frame... we went to a bodyshop i don't wish to name on the south shore of montreal ( but maybe I should...) and they took the car 2 months to fix the frame... Here's how the car came back to the bodyshop:

Hood hinge could barely close, headlight was still 1 inch pushed inside the hood. nothing aligned right, huge gap between the headlight and corner light.. What we latter found out is that they simply shimmed the fender and other parts of the body to make it ''close'' but that it!! What a fuckin shame... and they call them professional bodyshop...

oh and they also did this beautiful glue job free of charge........


In the mean time, the rear bumper got damaged from someone.. maybe at the bodyshop!


So imagine how the owner felt ; He used to have a uber-clean skyline and out of a sudden, he get 2 respray because the first one isnt done right. Then, he try to fix the bumper but have to be redone, get his headlight done and then by accident i smash one, then he get his frame fixed and learn that he have to get it redone... what a shitty year!!
Beside maybe this funny moment lol.. We shared a pic bumper-less with a Veyron :P



So the car went into storage like that....

Part 1 done... stay tuned for part 2 ( which is what was done for 2014!)
 
Part 2 :

Shoot out to The painter, Alex, at Promec in Laval ((450) 629-7077), for taking care of the car like it was meant to be! He sent me some picture of the progress so let's take a look at them.

The skyline GTR R32 is an iconic car and the owner wished to keep it OEM looking with small addition for a meaner look ( i.e: carbon fiber addon). For this reason, Alex had the job to restore the car as new as possible.

Trims: restoring trims is a real PITA because the car is now seen as a collection car and parts in Japan are now selling twice as much.. To change all the trims and seal on the car, it would've of cost min. 1500$ + 2 quarter windows ( which can usually go for 300-500$ each). So, Alex did a miracle by cleaning the trim, lightly sand them and paint them with a special trim black paint. I was very pleasant with what he did. Basically he saved the owner a 1500-2000$ expense. They look VERY GOOD.


1) Remember part 1 where I said the bodyshop did a shimming job instead of a actual frame job ? well.. the gab between the headlight and corner like was like that ''V'' . The guy at promec knew a retired guy (about 70yr old) who have all the frame tools in his garage.. they brought the car there and they finally managed to do the job it deserved!


2) The car had some small dent and such..Alex was able to remove all these dent simply by sanding down the paint to the metal because the car had so much paint on the car anyways.



Because of the new carbon fiber N1 lip on the hood, Alex had to fill the hole used by the oem lip:


While removing all lower body parts, Alex found out some part of the car had body filler and/or small rust ( normal for a 26 yr old car!)




Sanding down all the paint :





Then, each individual add-on part got painted:



The taillight received a smoked coat ( the owner didn't want to go too crazy because like I said before, preserving the OEM iconic of the Skyline was essential), but it still added a nice little gloss to the taillight. Corner light and backup light also have been smoked.


I personally recommended we had the intercooler black painted and it came out very nicely!!

big 4 inch greddy intercooler:


When I first saw the car, I realised Alex was a fan of drilling in the body to fix the skirt and spat.. however, even after some adhesive promoter and 3m double side tape.. some trim came off the car:




So we had to drill some part of the body to fix them 100%. Also, I should mention that these parts were not ',bolt-on'' like the product state! Lots of grinding and trimming were needed to make them fit .

Ohhhh and you remember what happened with the repair of the bumper !? you know the reparation wasn't well done first.. so instead of wasting more time on the repaired bumper, the owner decided to buy a brand new one from greddy usa.... well look how the bumper arrived at the bodyshop!! Man, he is so unlucky!! The guy pay twice the price to have a brand new bumper shipped and that's how he got it:







GREDDY USA have been total douchebag about it saying it was our fault and coming up with stupid excuse like we didn't keep the box..instead.. why don't you put bubble wrap worth 10$ all over the bumper ultra-expensive (1200$us) so we're sure thing like that don't happens. No bubble wrap was found on the bumper. a total disgrace. Shitty company I hope everyone who read this won't support greddy anymore !!! Way to treat their customer..... seriously screw them.

Alex, i had to repair it, but somehow the reparation didn't hold up for more than 50 kms.. not sure if the repair wasn't perfect or the paint too soft, but it only took 50 kms to put a solid crack at the exact same spot.




At the moment of writing this i haven't found a solution to this problem. we'll look into it ( either we try to fill the cracked paint or get it repainted again)

Car is almost ready.. its time for me to enter the play!

 
So i get to meet the car again, the painter called me asking me to come polish the trunk before we put the wing and won't be able to wet-sand it later one without removing the wing again.

Initial condition: missing a ton of clear reflection.. let see what we can do:

Process:
Rupes air-powered sanding machines ( we use the 3 ans 6 inch machine)
3m wet sanding paper
1 inch spot air powered machine
meguiars and 3m sanding and finishing paper
3m masking tape
Deflesko 6000 advanced gauge for paint reading on metal and alumium
Defelsko 200B gauge for reading fiberglass
3M sun gun
LED torch light
Rupes bigfoot for finishing and Makita rotary for compounding
Menzerna , HD and Meguiars polish/compound
Cquartz Nano-coating Finest
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff lol...

Orange peel:





Here's the difference between a finer grit sanding on the left and a after 2 sanding pass ( one beeing coarser and one finer) :


And now a more uniform look:


Work in progress: you can clearly see where theres still some orange peel to be removed and where the paint is flat and even:


Wet-sanding can be EXTREMELY MESSY! Here's one reason why a full wet-sanding is a minimum 15-20 hours. so much time needed to clean your mess after:



here I'm about to knock the orange peel on this door:






Here's a true work in progress,, it reminds me of the inside of a tree, where you can see the different layer of wood depending on its age. gradually you can see the orange peel beeing ''flatten'' and offering an uniform matte look to the paint:




These are the dust particle that gave me so much troubles on this car:


The painter was too generous with his clear coat ; putting too much clear coat can have a CONS.. it takes much longer to dry and thus it's harder for the detailer to cut throught the clear coat. As you can see, although i'm using a machine to offer an uniform sanding, i still ended up with lots of uneven spot:



After a third pass of finer grit, you can see the clear reflection coming back.. all it needs is a few compounding pass with a foam pad and we will have a perfect panel!





Booooom !! Told ya! Look at this reflection and gloss, no final polish or wax or nano-coating applied, just compounding with still slight hologram and buffer trail.






But it's still ultra messy:

 
After getting the car back from the bodyshop ( it stayed there 2 weeks + 2 month at the other useless bodyshop in 2013) + mechanic work .. the interior was very very dusty.. so we took the opportunities to deeply clean the interior using the best machine and technique possible:

Steamer machine
Industrial drying tool ( for faster curing and quicker application)
Hot water professional extractor machine
Ton loads of different chemicals ( raceglaze alcantara cleaner and anti-bacteria cleaner, meguiars fiber cleaner to name a few)
Cquartz Fabric and UV protection
Aquapel fog fight
Cquartz Finest for all plastic screen, metal pedal and door sill

Dusty interior with some stain on the seat:














Professionnal extractor at work!



Cquartz ozone treatment to help kill bacteria that cause bad odor:



It's all in the detail right ?? these gauges are brand new, yet they are still scratched due to cheap soft plastic screen.. I needed to polish all screen by hand using a menzerna polish and soft gold microfiber and cleaned the surface with carpro erase prior to the Finest nano-coating application which should help to reduce the chance of new swirls to be found. ( nano coating will harden the surface of which it is applied making it harder to scratch)






I even did the remote lol:

and nano-coated the pedal



Look at the final result:






Using the new carpro q-tip for cleaning interior vent:


Look at all the dirt, my extractor pulled!


Once the seat have been wetted by the extractor, i dry the interior using my dryer machine, once almost dry, i spray some ozone treatment like show previously.. and then when completely dry.. i will apply carpro fabric protection which in my testing prove to be better than 3m sctochguard! It also over UV protection which is perfect for this vehicle since the fabric of the seat can discolor over time due to UV rays abuse.
 
Okay let's look later on how the interior will look like once the new carpet and carbon fiber door sill get installed:

Of course the carbon fiber door sill were polished and nano-coated!

Now onto the engine-bay... quite a few works have been done there + all the polishing dust and wet-sanding, that engine bay was in done of a refresh:







With some high-speed driving and hard braking.. it's normal to see that much brake dust on this car:



Althought the paint is brand new, I still did a clay bar and decontamination process because of iron particle from the brake that could stick to the still-not-cured-100% paint.

Regarding the wheels, each one were individually removed for a full nano-coating treat! All wheels were washed a first time using sonax wheel cleaner, then I used Prima cosmonot to remove any grease inside the wheel barell, after that i went with autofinesse tar remover to remove old glue from wheel weight not used anymore. Once cleaned, I used Menzerna polish by hand for tight area and my small rupes 3 inch to polish the spoke and inside barell. Once done, I used carpro erase to remove polishing oils and then applied 2 layer of nano coating inside and outside.



I would say i took about 1 hours per wheel.

Here's another exemple of wet-sanding the pillar.

We start with a coarse grit:


Taking some paint measure just to monitories how much paint I'm removing but since the paint is a bit inconsistent, it's hard to keep track of it so I kinda forgot my effort at keeping track of it.




See, the reflection is MUCH BETTER now, yet still only wet-sanding happening. This is after meguiars #3000 grit disc.


Tool of predilection for working in tight spot:


TADAM! once polished.. nothing to report, just an ultra-clean paint with no orange peel and whatsoever


Yeah buddy!!!
 
Now we're approaching the final step.. Basicly the whole care have been polished and obviously wet-sanded ( except for the front bumper and grill), and I'm at the point of inspecting my work and work panel by panel if defect is present.. and obsviouly some defect were present ( I mean, we are all humans, it's hard to expect such an exhaustive project ( +80 hours) to go without one single ''trouble'', but this... who cares if it will be corrected before delivering the car? )

What I do is pick up 3 different light gun ( halogen, sungun and LED) and turn around he car, every time I see something i put a small tape:



I was mostly looking at sanding mark not corrected or small pigtail due to all the dust particle stuck on the paint.

look closely under the light spot, you will notice a half circular mark, that's a pigtail:



Later on.. I found this kind of orange peel on the pillar.. I first didn't want to go too crazy around the trim because they were very fragile and trims didn't get removed of the car prior to painting so last thing I want is burn the paint there.. but at the same time it was way too obvious of orange peel to let it like that. see by yourself?





See the white faded paint. this is what i had to polish by hand using these products:






I also had to wet-sand the inside of the mirror because the grain was too present to be ignored. it's actually quite complicated to polish this area because wet-sanding is easy, but removing sanding mark by hands is a whole different story.. i believe i spent 1 hour per mirror just to polish /sand 30% of the mirror.



This is how far the machine could go.. i had to do the rest by hand :



In the whole process, the car didn't stay 2 weeks in the shop, so on a week-end, the following monday, the car came with a vandalism mark, yeah someone scuffed the paint in the pillar quite badly.

I started by putting some touch-up paint:



I then carefully wet-sanded and polished the area and I must say i was quite happy with the end result!





Just suck that people have absolutely no respect for clean and unique car like this one. This really piss me off.

The wiper were in bad shape with paint peeling so I decided to paint them overnight.








Remember the gap found on 50% of the sideskirt/splat and other after-market fiberglass add-on ? Well.. it was time to screw them to the panel and have a little of urethane to seal the gap.





 
The windows were clean, but still 25 yr old... so I took the time to polish them using my air-powered rupes tool ( the GG 3 inch is not powerful enough), carpro ceramiglass and GG windows pad. ( the smallest the better for better accuracy around the edge)

The worst part was one rear quarter windows which had tons of deep scratches, i bet it someone who went to DRAG, had his number there and removed with a razor metal blade that scratched the glass. I would say i was able to remove most of the haziness found in the glass and reduce the scratches by about 30-40% which is still better than nothing!! If you ask your local detailer, chances are he will tells you there's nothing that can be done, so 30-40% correction is better than nothing at all!





After that, I used Aquapel on all windows for a great protection and awesome water repellency




Once everything was done, i could finally nano-coat all the brand new trims to protect them the best I could and offered a deep satin shine to them.



Engine bay got a clean up too and every metal was polished to obtain a better look:







Here we are: car is ALMOST done and I'm here applying one of the best nano-coating on the market, exclusive to a few detailer, Cquartz Finest provide an awesome gloss while offering excellent protection against scratch and swirls.

I still have minor this and that to fix on the car ( interior/exterior/engine bay all together),most likely everything will be done in one full day.. it just take a bit more times to finish. ( i.e: drilling the side skirt, installing new reflective sticker and new DRL rear light, last bit of shine in the engine bay)

Oh yeah, the owner also had to re-install his front and rear diffuser since the bodyshop removed them to paint all part more easily and since the front bumper was new, new hole had to be drilled to hold the front diffuser. All carbon parts have been polished and nano-coated with finest prior to installation:


Here some after-shot.. a full high quality photoshoot will happens shortly!!









 
Some more after-pic the next day after letting the coating cure overnight:



















Isn't that UBER MEGA gorgeous ?? damnnnnn














Some shot of the interior with carbon fiber door sill, new carpet and new nismo plate:






To reach me, my information are in my signature or my email is:

[email protected]
 
Wow that was one massive project you had on your hands but you perfected that R32 GTR skyline above the highest quality
 
That was incredible. Your work ethic is something to be proud of. Awesome job on an awesome car.

:xyxthumbs:
 
Awesome job on a true Japanese muscle car:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

Sent from my SPH-M930 using Tapatalk 2
 
Superior work and write-up, sincere congratulations on this one.

Thanks for sharing,

Kind Regards.
 
Holy cow -man awesome work and write-up, thanks for sharing!
 
Câline, ça c'est du boulot!

T'as bien fait. C'est pas mal magnifique à c't'heure! Félicitations!
 
Don't even know what to say, talk about determination to stay on top of it all the way through. Very nice!!!
 
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