`74 Duster - Partial Sand and Polish

**PorscheGuy997** · 03-13-2013, 05:17 PM

Hey guys,

Here is another one of my recent projects. It`s not every day that you see a Duster, let alone with a 400 under the hood.

The paint is hard to describe. First, the black stripes are all painted on. Second, there is a ton of paint on the car. Many areas measured well over 19mils, but the clearcoat was thick in some spots and thin in others. There were runs galore and some spots had been poorly sprayed. The owner wanted the hood and trunk leveled, along with both rear quarters and the runs needed to be removed.

A little orange peel:

Zero gloss:

A few runs:

The hood and trunk took a ton of sanding to level. I went over the hood a total of five times with Unigrit 1500 Sanding Disks in order to properly level the paint.

After the first pass:

In order to refine the finish, I went over the hood using Unigrit 3000 Finishing Disks. Then, I used a Meguiar`s double sided wool pad and M101 to remove the sanding marks.

Not too bad:

The rear quarters received a quick leveling using Mirka Abranet Soft 1000, Unigrit 3000 Finishing and 3M Trizact 5000. I found the Abranet disks leveled extremely quick and really saved time. The rest of the body was polished using the Rupes 21 and HD Polish on a Meguiar`s Microfiber Finishing disk.

The afters...

As Kevin Brown put it, the hood now looks like a sinkhole...

Rear quarters finished out nicely:

Runs are completely leveled:

Trunk looks much improved:

All finished:

Overall, it wasn`t a bad project to work on. Although I wish the painter used consistent techniques when spraying, I was able to correct the paint to a decent level. Maybe sometime I can have the car for a week and sand the whole body, but we`ll see.

A huge thanks goes out to Kevin Brown for supplying the sanding blocks and disks. Don`t know what I would do without that genius!

**derek37** · 03-13-2013, 05:26 PM

Wow, supercool and great job.

**Barry Theal** · 03-13-2013, 05:27 PM

Great work Chris!

**texaggie1** · 03-13-2013, 05:34 PM

Sweet!! Nice work

**C. Charles Hahn** · 03-13-2013, 06:02 PM

That`s an awesome result; nice work Chris!

**mikemurphy234** · 03-13-2013, 06:23 PM

Nice work Chris! It`s too bad that he didn`t let you do the whole thing.

**maxepr1** · 03-13-2013, 07:59 PM

Beautiful work Chris! Nice when they leave you plenty of "Meat" to work with!

**RToth** · 03-13-2013, 11:18 PM

A lot of work went into that and it shows! 19 mil is some crazy thick paint!

**Scottwax** · 03-14-2013, 02:02 AM

Looks amazing! Night and day difference.

**PorscheGuy997** · 03-14-2013, 02:14 PM

Thanks for all the compliments, guys! Really appreciate it.

**RaskyR1** · 03-14-2013, 03:40 PM

Great work Chris!

Did you blade the runs or did you use one of the many cool new tools BuffDaddy carries? I finally got to try out the Festool Scraper last week on the `77 TA I`ve been working on. Car had lots of runs, sags, and dust nibs...worked pretty well!

**C. Charles Hahn** · 03-14-2013, 04:13 PM

Originally Posted by RaskyR1

Did you blade the runs...

...through the wax?

:grinno:

**PorscheGuy997** · 03-14-2013, 04:50 PM

Originally Posted by RaskyR1

Did you blade the runs or did you use one of the many cool new tools BuffDaddy carries? I finally got to try out the Festool Scraper last week on the `77 TA I`ve been working on. Car had lots of runs, sags, and dust nibs...worked pretty well!

This was only the second time I`ve tried removing runs. I used a few Meguiar`s sanding blocks (1500 and 2k) on each of the runs. Once the majority of the runs were leveled on the front quarter, I tried a Mirka Abranet Soft 1k disk. To my surprise, it leveled the entire section in no time. Just goes to show the leveling capability of the Abranet design.

I wish I had one of the Festool or Mirka tools available, but I rarely run into runs.

Originally Posted by C. Charles Hahn

...through the wax?

:grinno:

I am the first one on the internet to blade through Opti-Coat.

**David Fermani** · 03-14-2013, 09:23 PM

Nice work Chris! Color looks sick. Did you go from M101/wool to HD Polish mostly?

**PorscheGuy997** · 03-15-2013, 02:11 PM

Originally Posted by David Fermani

Nice work Chris! Color looks sick. Did you go from M101/wool to HD Polish mostly?

Thanks!

I did leave out a step in there... For the areas that were sanded, I followed them up with D300 and a MF Cutting on my Rupes 21. Then it was on to HD Polish on a MF Finishing pad.