what would you use?

cooksnj

cooksnj

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I'm doing my first paid paint correction this weekend on a car( a 1990 cadillac sedan deville ) that has been through the car wash for 20 years. The paint is thin, i can see some primer spots here and there, with some deep swirls. I was gonna do a megs 105/205 combo, but now I'm thinking this may be to aggressive for the paint. I'm now leaning towards a 1 step of AIO. Without pictures and to the best of your knowledge do you think this is the right thing to do? Thank you for your help on this.
 
cooksnj said:
I'm doing my first paid paint correction this weekend on a car( a 1990 cadillac sedan deville ) that has been through the car wash for 20 years. The paint is thin, i can see some primer spots here and there, with some deep swirls. I was gonna do a megs 105/205 combo, but now I'm thinking this may be to aggressive for the paint. I'm now leaning towards a 1 step of AIO. Without pictures and to the best of your knowledge do you think this is the right thing to do? Thank you for your help on this.
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Get a release of liability unless you want to get sued on your first job. This is where a PTG comes in handy. Good Luck
 
If you have the 205 I would give it a shot with a light polishing pad and see if you can clear up some of the paint problems. If the paint is thin I would stay away from 105 because it cuts fast and may cause some problems. Do you have a paint thickness gauge? because that would give you a good idea how much you can do. In my experience the AIO's don't have enough cut to get rid of deeper swirls but do well to clean up light swirls like toweling marks and minor marring. It also depends on what kind of money the customer is willing to pay for correction. Like I've been told here plenty of times, try the product/pad with the least aggressiveness first and work up to more aggressive products to get the desired results.

Also, make sure to let the customer know how bad the car really is, it might be necessary to get a repaint...if that is the case, I would give him a good paint shop reference and try to get some cash out of the shop for your reference, at least then you don't come out without profit. Do you have a paint shop that you network with?
 
I'd carefully photograph the entire car particularly those areas of concern. Clearly document what you find and have a conversation with the owner and have him sign a waver or release form. Anyone with 1/4 of a brain see's that your on your game would loose in court "if" he tried.
 
Some really good advice here so far...

It's too bad you're first for-profit detail job sounds like it's ready to go to Maaco

For what it's worth, when someone asks me to detail their car and then when I look at it I can see it's never been taken care of in the past, the first thing I wonder is

What's changed that now the owner is going to take care of the car?


Usually the answer is 'nothing'


That means even if I take the job and restore a show room new shine to the car, it's likely going to just go downhill again because the owner is going to do the same thing to it that they've been doing all along.

That's kind of sounds like the type of person your new, potential customer is going to turn out to be.

While it can be exciting to have your first customer, it's more exciting to have a customer with a car you know they'll take care of after you work your magic and also a car that has some paint on it to start with.

It can be hard to do but maybe take a pass on this opportunity if you can. If you can't then keep it VERY simple.

Wash, clay, use a light cleaner/wax, dress the tires and clean the glass inside and out.

When you use the cleaner/wax either apply it by hand or use a polishing pad with your polisher, DON'T aim for a show car finish, just shoot for shiny paint.

:)
 
thanks to everybody, especially mike and jon, great,great advice.
here is what i have. now that i have properly washed and clayed, i don't believe it's as bad as i thought. I'm concerned about the pinstripes though. i did a small test spot with tape, and they pulled right off. i am gonna just work around them.
the owner knows not to expect to much. he's just letting me do it. he saw how i take care of mine, and got to talking to me, and for some reason he decided to let me. (my car is not even in good shape right now) i told him not to expect to much, but that i would try. he knows about the stripes and like bobby g said i have pics. as you can see, i should not be able to make it to much worse.
 
That seem like it could come out pretty well, make sure to pull off those hubcaps and clean them well. You might want to grab some black wheel paint and repaint the rim behind the spokes...it could get you a nice tip. Keep us posted with some final pics. Good luck with everything
 
yeah...it didn't come out to well. could not get the hood clear, i thought this was gonna be a soft paint and clear, due to the fact it's been out in the sun for 20 years or so, boy was i wrong. i wish i could get to the detail fest, i need to. i think the clear was gone, and the paint was so hard. i used megs 105 and an orange pad, and could hardly touch it. i don't know if that makes sense. i would have thought the paint would be fragile, but it was just the opposite. pad got hot, started breaking down. i didn't have all the tools i needed for this job. i really did it for experience and boy did i get some. I'll post some after pics later when i get a chance. the owner new not to expert much, he was well aware of the fact I'm just learning. I'll see what he says tom. thanks again.
 
I have been hoping you were going to post the after pics. Thanks for the update
 
here are some of the afters. i didn't take to many, because i was to disgusted. well you live and learn. i would love to know if any of you guys could tell me what you think happened with the paint? to hard for megs twins and orange pad? i could not get it to budge. when i did my sons mustang, there was lots of dust from the 105. this car had no dust. sounds to me like no clear. thank you. sorry about some of the pics, my camera is having some issues. i think the roof came out pretty good considering it is 20 years old and never been taken care of. the trunk looks like the hood though.

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Looks good for any car that has been neglected for 20 years of neglect. It is hard enough to turn around 5 years of bad washing and scratches but 20 is really a pain. I would say try wetsanding the rids out but you will definitely need a paint gauge in order to pursue that job. It seems it may be too late to get much more out. Did you by any chance try 105 with wool and rotary? It will give a very good cut and possibly level the paint and get rid of a few more scratches. It would take more work to clean up after the wool swirls but if its necessary I resort to it.

The side shot looks good, and has a nice reflection. Nice work cleaning it up, a repaint would probably be necessary to get perfection, but for what you can do, you did well

Did you see any red on your pad after a section? If not, then there is still clear.
 
JonMiles said:
Looks good for any car that has been neglected for 20 years of neglect. It is hard enough to turn around 5 years of bad washing and scratches but 20 is really a pain. I would say try wetsanding the rids out but you will definitely need a paint gauge in order to pursue that job. It seems it may be too late to get much more out. Did you by any chance try 105 with wool and rotary? It will give a very good cut and possibly level the paint and get rid of a few more scratches. It would take more work to clean up after the wool swirls but if its necessary I resort to it.

The side shot looks good, and has a nice reflection. Nice work cleaning it up, a repaint would probably be necessary to get perfection, but for what you can do, you did well

Did you see any red on your pad after a section? If not, then there is still clear.
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that's true, thanks for pointing that out to me. thank you for the comments. i have allot to learn. i told the owner he would probably need to have it wetsanded or even repainted. he loved it, go figure? i have not gotten to the wetsand level or even the wool pad yet. would love to try it out though.
 
cooksnj said:
that's true, thanks for pointing that out to me. thank you for the comments. i have allot to learn. i told the owner he would probably need to have it wetsanded or even repainted. he loved it, go figure? i have not gotten to the wetsand level or even the wool pad yet. would love to try it out though.
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I was where you are about 3 years ago and there is still much for me to learn. I took a piece of advice from a well known detailer in the area to learn the ropes of how to make paint work for me. He said go and pick yourself up a junk hood and spend the 100 bucks to get it repainted with some single stage on one side and base/clear on the other. If you get a big truck hood you can tape off about a 2 dozen sections and practice on it. He also said to take a palm branch and scratch up a few sections with it to give you a real scenario on the paint and also to use a wool pad running dry to put some swirls in a few sections. I picked up 2 saw horses to sit the scratched up freshly painted on while I practiced on it. I wetsanded and compounded a few sections on both sides, and I did compounding and polishing on a few. After a while I got the hang of what I was using and learned how to do it quite well. On this hood I gained experience in wetsanding, rotary buffer, DA and learned what my products could do and how long to work them. Now the hood looks brand new, no peel, no scratches, no burns. It was a black paint with no flake in it and I got the hood off an old f350 sitting in a junk yard (just to let you know how big it was).
 
Mike.Phillips@Autogeek said:
When you use the cleaner/wax either apply it by hand or use a polishing pad with your polisher, DON'T aim for a show car finish, just shoot for shiny paint.

:)
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Mike, that's what I did on the last car I detailed(piss poor paint). Wash, clay, wax. If anything, it made the swirls more noticeable, if that makes any sense?
 
cooksnj said:
i told the owner he would probably need to have it wetsanded or even repainted. he loved it, go figure?
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Im not supprised he loved it, if he neglected the car for 20 years then he doesnt know what he is looking at. If it is shiny and looks better than before he will be happy. People like that obviously dont care about swirls and stuff like that. Heck they probably dont even know what a swirl is. For all they know it might just be a part of the paint. I think that looking at peoples show&shine can make you doubt whether or not you have done a good job or gotten the paint where it should be, I know that has happened to me. Like mike has said, taylor it to your customer. This client wont appretiate the countless hrs put in to achieve 95% perfection so give them what they want and make them happy and save yourself the frustration.

Thats just my 2cents

All the best,
Jon
 
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