1940 Nash attacked by a rotary noob - Pinnacle Auto Detail - CT

[PinnacleAutoCT]

Hey guys, I haven’t posted in a while and figured this was a good car to get back into the swing of things with. Like the title says, this is a 1940 Nash and the paint was absolutely hammered by an inexperienced rotary user. The owner’s son had seen me correcting a few of their cars (1965 Malibu, Dodge 1500, etc) and wanted to try his hand at polishing, buying a Dewalt 849, some pads and polish. He quickly got in over his head and the father called me in to get things looking proper. Upon arrival the car looked
decent, reflecting light and showing good shine under the florescent lighting, but a quick inspection with my LED headlamp showed heavy marring and lots of rotary swirls. Given that the paint was quite old and relatively soft, I decided to shoot for around 80% defect removal, which would hopefully remove the rotary trails and most of the straight-line marring, while still leaving a healthy amount of paint behind.

Before:

The car actually looked decent under the dim overhead lighting:

DSC07919 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

Further inspection with a 150 lumen LED light showed the true condition of the paint:

DSC07920 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

DSC07922 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

Compound dust still speckled the fender:

DSC07923 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

Here you can see a mixture of deeper vertical scratches and some heavy marring from improper wipe-downs:

DSC07926 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07945 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

The rotary swirls were especially apparent on the driver’s door, I can only imagine what this must have looked like on a sunny day:

DSC07927 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07928 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

Here you can view the overlap from the son’s polishing effort on the door spilling into the intermediate panel. Given these polishing techniques which probably were hard on the panel edges, and the age of the paint, I felt it would be best to avoid going for perfection with my correction process:

DSC07929 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07932 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

The fender tops unfortunately weren’t spared the rotary treatment either:

DSC07933 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07934 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

This is a little hard to make out, but it’s a gouge that would later be touched up:

DSC07935 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

Some panels were untouched by the rotary, revealing the swirly mess that had accumulated over the course of decades:

DSC07938 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

DSC07950 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

DSC07951 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

To start my process the car was wiped down with Optimum No Rinse at QD dilution to prevent water from pooling in any cracks or crevices and causing rust. Next the paint was treated with Meguiar’s #7 to restore some oils to the single stage, even though it didn’t appear to be oxidized or excessively dry. I then ran through a bunch of different polishes and polish/compound mixtures, finally settling on HD Polish on Lake Country black finishing pads, with the Rupes 21 and 75E polishers. I did my cutting work between speeds 5-6 with moderate pressure for 3-5 passes, and finished around speeds 4-4.5 with light pressure for an additional pass or two. The finishing passes at lower speeds and lighter pressure while using proper technique to maintain pad rotation allowed me to leave behind a properly refined finish without any micromarring. The paint was then sealed with CarPro Reload, the whitewalls were cleaned with OPC @ 3:1 dilution, and the chrome bumpers and wheels were lightly polished with HD Speed, LC black pads and the Rupes 75E, and were then sealed with Reload.
Here are the final results:

The LED light showed an 80%+ correction rate, massively improved from the initial condition:

DSC07994 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
Some deeper defects still remained, but it just wasn’t worthwhile to eat through more paint chasing them:
DSC07980 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07979 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07977 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07975 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07968 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07964 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC07960 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08037 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08038 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

DSC08040 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

DSC08042 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

These fenders are great for reflection shots:

DSC08043 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08044 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08036 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08035 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08033 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

Like a black mirror!:

DSC08029 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08027 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08018 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08015 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr
DSC08010 by Mike Donoghue, on Flickr

Thanks for looking, comments and questions are welcome!

[RaydiantDetail]

Awesome job bringing life back into that paint! looks great now I am sure the owner will be super happy with those results!

[Ronkh]

Glad you`re back Mike.

Beautiful save. He should be glad he didn`t go through the paint.

How are you using regular lc pads with rupes 15 & 21 without problems ?!??!?!?! I gotta know. I shred em at speed 3

[Civicclutch]

Thank you thank you thank you for saving such a beautiful car. I bet that father was almost wanted for murder before you fixed it


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[Sizzle Chest]

SO much better! Great work!

[Migue]

" Hey Dad, watched a 10 minute Youtube video....I got this..."

Great results with that HD Polish/Black Pad combo, very surprising . I got some of those and they are SOFT, I should buy more since i was only using them on rare occasions for "jeweling" after Cut/Polish .

[JustJesus]

" Hey Dad, watched a 10 minute Youtube video....I got this..."

That`s what I told my wife! (But I saw the video 2-3 times)

Pinnacle, nice work man. Good job capturing those defects, too!

[PinnacleAutoCT]

Thanks guys!

Ronkh- The black LC pads have never given me any issue at high speeds, but I swap them out frequently; I probably went through 12-14 on this car.

[Accumulator]

PinnacleAutoCT- I resisted looking for sooo long as I knew the before pix would break my heart (sigh...all that old paint gone forever due to behavior I simply cannot rationalize, all that marring...sigh).

But yes indeed, you did a great job on it, starting with the M07 pretreatment. And I especially commend you on knowing when to say "when" rather than going for Autopian Perfection. Superb Work.

Now if they`ll just *keep* it that nice!

That bit about not wanting to get it too wet is something that I ponder on older vehicles, even my not-really-THAT-old Jag. It`s one thing when you`ll be correcting anyhow, but now that it`s perfect those ONR washes might be challenging in the risk-of-marring sense.

[jimmie jam]

Mike, what an outstanding result! I like to use different criteria for "perfection" given all the factors surrounding a particular vehicles history...I believe that this one qualifies for "perfection" from your starting point. Well done, the owner must have been THRILLED.

[512detail]

wow, great turnaround....you got some brass ones putting reload on that nice black finish! props!