I'll have to upload some other pictures on Monday when I have the advantage of my office's high speed T1. A 28.8 kbps connection is no way to live....
I've done cars
for shows in the past, and I've had my car in local car club shows from time to time... But this is the first time that I shined it up enough that I created the standard that the other cars would be judged by.
I've spent the last couple weeks getting it ready. I've polished it out to where I'm 95% satisfied with it. There are some marks that I'm sure can be taken out, I just don't think anyone will notice either way. White just gets whiter in the light anyway. The imperfections that I see under the 1000 watt lights are usually hidden pretty well from the average joe.
I finished my polishing last week and started on the Platinum layers this week. I went pure Platinum on this one. No AIO.
I know that may shock some of ya. lol I decided to go pure this time. Paint Pre Cleaner followed by 3 layers of UPP (on different days, of course). I finished up with the UPP layers on Thursday and put a layer of P21S on Friday and a layer of Vintage on today. I gotta say, Vintage applied a lot different this time than it did when I used it in December. It must have been because I was holding this chunk of wax in one hand and it was melting pretty quick or something. Before it seemed comparable to P21S in ease to buff off. This time it was a lot different. Much tougher. Must be the higher level of carnauba or something. The difference from P21S to Vintage isn't noticable really. We'll see how it does.
I spent a lot of time on Friday night working on the engine. I discovered Simple Green at last. I've always mixed up my own brew of degreaser, but I just ran out of Advanage and autoint degreaser concentrates. I gotta say, I'm very impressed. Simple green rules.
Between that and several rags, brushes, and Qtips I got that engine in primo condition. I did the underside of the hood and even waxed it. Well, not
waxed per se... I used UPP.
Still, it really looked good. The pic I chose to post first shows the great reflection I was even able to get off the inside of the hood.
Every painted area of that engine is clean now. I've got the damaged hands to prove it. lol I can barely type today because they got so cut up trying to get around different things. I guess its lucky I've got small bones so it was easier to get around in there. I even went so far as to wrap my fingers with shop towels and try and get areas that way. It was quite the site.... My neighbors really think I've lost it this time.
The show wasn't a concours show by any means. There were some scary cars there. I've got some great examples of why you don't use a wool pad and Diamon Cut with a $35 dollar buffer from WalMart.
Talk about scary... Mostly it was an import show, but there were a few domestics representing. There was a really sweet Vette and a nice Camaro SS there too. Sorry Bill... It was black.
I knew I wasn't going to win in my class because my car is so stock it wasn't going to get the points in that area. I swept in the cleanliness area though.
That was all I was really interested in doing. I wanted to set a standard so people knew what was possible. It was sad to see cars 2 or 3 years newer than mine looking worse than mine did when I started on it two weeks ago. Oh well... It was a great experience that really made me work my Autopian muscles. My car looks great now so it was all worth it.
I'm going to look for another show soon. I need more mods.... 
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