The Volkswagen Beetle was designed by Dr. Ferdninand Porsche to be the people`s car. It started production in 1938 and continued almost unchanged until 1967. The 1951 model I was able to work on has the rare "split window" design and it almost indistingusible from the orginal models.
I have never been into the whole Beetle thing, but after spending almost a week (35+ hours) working on this car, the charm started to rub out. This Beetle is probably the single nicest car I have ever work on in terms of build quality. The door panels are straight, the gaps are Pepple Beach even, there is no waviness or orange peel (including the frame, jambs, trunk, and engine bay!). It was just awesome to see such a iconic car treated to such a high dollar restoration.
Now it just needed a little help to get it to its best.
The Beetle was foamed up with P21s Total Body Wash to clean the paint. After careful washing of every surface, the Beetle was pulled into the garage for an inspection.
Because I was doing this detail at my house (in my rather cramped garage) I had the luxury of taking as much time as necessary to bring the paint to its highest level. I worked mostly at night (after working during the day) and shot for absolute perfection.
A careful pre-paint inspection revealed that paint was very thick between 16.7 and 18.5 mils, with an average in the 17.1 range. After talking with the owner I discovered it was painted single stage blue, then cleared on top of for multiple coats. Under the halegon lights, I noticed (besides light swirls and trails) a large amout of Random Isolated Deep Scratches) or RIDS, and circular wool marring.
When soft paint is fresh, it can be damaging to polish with twisted wool, because the fibers can leave deep cuts in the paint, which look Audi symbols. Unforuntately these types of marks where all over the car, hidden by the swirls.
I decieded to work on the door first to get an idea of the total time needed, and to lock in on a process that would work.
Under the halogens, here is a shot of the driver side door after 2 passes of SIP and white pad (which removed 95 percent of the swirling, but left thousands of RIDS and rotary rings.
I had to up the aggressiveness, and elected on Meguiars` UCC M105 and a lake country Purple Wool (which is fine enough in cut to not instill more rings). I measured the area at 17.2 mils, then made several passes at 1800 (until the defects where removed). I believe in the end I made 9 passes with M105 and a purple wool, then followed with SIP on a white CCS pad. I rechecked the paint depth from time to time, and ended up with 16.8mils (or removing .4 mils) to remove the majority of defects. Given that this car has upwards of 8 coats of clear, I felt comfortable removing this large amount of paint.
Then each section was burished with Menzerna 106ff on a Meguiars Solo finishing pad.
It took me just over 4 hours to complete the door (trying different combinations). Argh, this was going to be a hard one.
Front fender before...
during
after
Infront of the drivers door had several scratches and huge amounts of marring.
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