1959 Corvette major correction - Pinnacle Auto Detail - CT

**PinnacleAutoCT** · 03-09-2019, 02:06 PM

Hi guys, unfortunately it`s been a while since I`ve had enough time to post anything on the forum, but this was a recent job that I figured would be appreciated on here. This was a new client referred to me by one of my oldest, he bought this car more than forty years ago and since then only put about a thousand miles on it, just moving it from garage to garage over the years. Since he`d owned it there had been no paintwork done and the only cosmetic maintenance it had seen was an occasional wax job with "Rain Dance" (not sure what that is). The plan initially was to shoot for 70-80% defect removal with a one-step correction since the paint was quite old and in some places edges had been burned through, thinned, or showed checking from age.

Before:

After careful cleaning of the paintwork with Poorboys World Spray & Wipe waterless wash, I clayed the car and then applied a thick coat of Meguiar’s #7 Showcar Glaze, a product which would restore oils to the single stage paint, making it less brittle and easier to work with while also preserving the finish post-correction. As you can see, some of the paint’s luster was restored at this early stage, though the marring was still quite evident:

At this point it was necessary to assess options for paint correction. As mentioned earlier, this paintwork had been over-polished in a few areas in decades past and was showing other signs of deterioration, so my initial plan was for a one-step correction yielding 70–80% defect removal. After trying many different polish and pad compounds it became clear that a one-step would at best remove half of the paint’s defects, yielding a finish that was clearly lacking even at a quick glance under bright lighting. Moving on to testing two-step correction options, I settled on a combination of Meguiar’s microfiber cutting pads with a mixture of Meguiar’s D300 compound and HD Polish, providing moderate cutting ability with relatively little micromarring left behind. To remove this micromarring I followed with HD Polish on Lake Country black foam finishing pads. All polishing was performed with the Rupes 21 mk.II, 75E and Ibrid Nano long-stroke dual action polishers. Following this, the paintwork would be protected by CarPro’s Reload silica sealant.

After:

Overall I`d say there was a big improvement in the paint (despite the remaining RIDs, chips, etc), we easily hit our target correction rate and the customer was very happy. Questions and comments welcome!