Porsche 911 Turbo (930) Martini Special Edition

[seech]

My first detail on a Porsche....and I'm lucky enough to land this very rare Porsche 911 Turbo (930) Martini Special Edition. Many thanks to the kind and generous owner to entrust his classic Porsche with me.

I had expected to spend one or at most two days on this car when I had made arrangements with the owner to carry out the detail over the long Malaysian holiday weekend. Due to unforeseen issues with the paint and some prior commitments, this detail ended up stretching over four days with 22 hours spent on the car. It was tiring, challenging and immensely satisfying once the car was completed.

On with the extremely long story....

Did an inspection of the car with the owner when it was dropped of.

The car showed signs of being regularly used. Plenty of swirls and RIDS on the paintwork. The owner has a few large dogs and they also left their mark on the car.

The owner highlighted some issues with the paint in some locations. There were signs of some severe orange peel which the owner suspects was hydraulic fluid which leaked out of a hydraulic car jack in his house. The owner also requested that the Martini decals be protected as they were factory originals.

Started off with a two bucket wash with NXT Car Wash. Rubber trim, wheels and tires were sprayed with APC (1:10) and agitated with a brush. Tar was removed with a tar remover and the body and windows were clayed. Wheels cleaned with D151 and protected with NXT 2.0.

Before:

NXT Tech Protect use on all of the rubber and plastic trim. After:

Before:

After:

Contamination around windows removed with clay:

Door jambs and other interior painted surfaces cleaned and protected with D151.

Fuel filler cap. Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Underside of hood. Before:

Scratches around door handle removed with Scratch X.

After:

[seech]

The original floor mats were quite delicate and some of the backing was peeling off so decided on a vacuum and APC on the rubber portions.

Interior was vacuumed, cleaned with APC and the leather protected with Gold Class Leather Cleaner/Conditioner.
Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Out with the spotlight. Swirls and RIDS everywhere.

The front fenders had some deep scratches caused by the dogs and also some bubbling of the paint.

The severe orange peel was evident on both doors and some other areas on the body.

I decided to do a test spot in a less conspicuous area to see if the orange peel could be wetsanded and corrected.

After sanding:

Followed by M105 w/ Solo Burgundy Wool Pad:

Before:

After:

I posted a few pictures of the test spot on my blog and asked the owner to take a look. I called him the following morning to explain what had been done to that area and explained the risks involved with wetsanding. After some discussion, the owner decided that the panels would have to be repainted to get rid of the orange peel anyway and agreed to let me try to correct the problems by wetsanding.

On with the correction! Taping off the Martini stripes and other areas.

A test area was marked out on the hood.

Decided to try M105/Solo Yellow Wool Pad on the right. Still some swirls visible.

M105/Solo Burgundy Wool Pad on the left. Much better results. Some RIDS still visible but most swirls removed.

The results were quite evident the following morning. The two test areas were noticeably whiter than the surroundings.

[seech]

On with the peeling of the orange.... Decided to start near the test area and work my way around the car.

A picture of the rear fender just behind and ahead of the test spot.

After wetsanding:

Followed by M105/Solo Burgundy Wool Pad:

Next!!!! More orange peel on the RHS door.

RHS door panel. Notice the blurred reflection on the left.

After sanding:

Halfway correcting with M105. Can start to see the smoothness and reflection coming through.

Done:

Front RHS fender did not have orange peel but was severely swirled.

The top of the fender had swirls and some very deep scratches caused by the owners dogs.

After sanding to try and reduce the scratches:

Swirls removed but the scratches were too deep as they went through the paint.

On with the LHS of the car. The LHS front fender had some strange bubbling in the paint.

Efforts to wetsand the bubbles resulted in this:

If you look closely you can see the paint thinning out on the tops of the bubbles. Decided to stop wetsanding this panel. Was later informed by the owners son that this panel had been repainted some time ago and that he suspected the bubbles were caused by improper preparation of the panel before painting.

The worst orange peel on the entire car was on the LHS door panel.

Decided to do a 50/50 with this panel.

After wetsanding:

There was still a lot of surface unevenness evident:

Repeated the wetsanding and compounding. Much better....

[seech]

After spending a considerable amount of time on that one panel, moved on to the rear LHS fender.

The plastic rear reflector with the Porsche wording was also faded. Corrected on the left, original on the right.

Much better...

Some pictures of the engine. The black thing on top is the intercooler for the turbo. The older 911's were air cooled and that's the fan used to cool the engine. Didn't do any detailing to the engine bay as the detail was taking much longer than expected and I was running out of time.

After compounding with M105, the entire car was finished with M80/W8007/Rotary followed by NXT 2.0/W9006/ROB and UQD.

Finally.... plenty of after shots.

Turned the car around to take some sunlight pictures of the other side.

[seech]

The orange peel was still evident in this section as there was a limit to how much I could wetsand and correct around the stickers.

But the lower panel turned out quite well.

The section under the rear spoiler has a Porsche badge on the rubber portion and the words 'Porsche' stamped into the metal just below. Very nice....

The owner was kind enough to let me drive the car around the neighborhood for some final shots.

When the owner came to collect the car he offered to give me a ride on a highway nearby. That's still some impressive power from a car built in 1982. He even let me drive it on the way back which made this detail all worth it.

After all the time spent on the car, I was almost sorry to see it go. This was all that what was left behind on the garage floor.

Many thanks for looking. As always, your comments and feedback are most welcome.

I need to get some rest now........

[Aviator16]

That is most impressive, you should be very proud of yourself to have finished tackling that job. I would have wanted to quit after looking at all of that orange peel.
The corrections achieved are unparalleled as far as I have seen in the detailers domain. I could see a body shop taking on this car much more readily than a private detailer.

Once again, amazing job, rest up.

[seech]

Aviator16, many thanks. It was a lot of work but the end results were worth it.

[DavidB]

Fantastic pictorial. Thanks for sharing!!!

[OCKlasse]

Pictures don't work. Tried browsers other than Firefox as well.

[DavidB]

Originally Posted by OCKlasse

Pictures don't work. Tried browsers other than Firefox as well.

That was my bad. I moved it to the pro area and broke the images.

seech, you need to remove the HTML from your post and use the IMG tags. I did not realize HTML processing was turned on in this forum area. I will be turning it OFF.

[David Fermani]

Very nice write up! Reminds me of the 70 911T I used to have.

[NRZ]

That is simply awesome, I can only imagine the value of that car!! They didnt call those things widow makers for nothing. That turbo boost was scary from all accounts of people I knew lucky enough to ever drive one!