A coworker's husband recently bought a '69 Chevelle SS. The car has a warmed up 454 with a big cam, TH350 trans, aftermarket torque converter, front disc brakes, etc. It's a sweet car and I was encouraged to drive it so I'd usually take it to grab some food after work or run to the grocery store for a quick drive after work before beginning the detail.
The car was to enter a car show today (Saturday) and the car was dropped off on Tuesday evening. This seems like a lot of time to complete the job, but I work a regular 9-5 and also a second job, often until 7-8pm. Time was limited so the pictures are as well.
On top of this, my wife is a professional photographer who shot a wedding in Savannah today so she left with the good photography gear yesterday, which means most of the pictures are from my iPhone.
Here is the car as it arrived at my house:
I began the detail with the usual two bucket wash, using Dawn dish soap and APC to ensure there was no wax remaining on the finish. The paint is 6 years old and I don't think it has been waxed since new. I also believe it was washed with scouring pads as I've never seen paint this bad.
Here's the brand new clay bar after 1/4 of the hood:
I flipped it over and this fresh side is after one white racing stripe on the hood:
So now lets check for defects. I wouldn't have to look very hard!
Ok, so I have my work cut out for me!!
My choice ended up being my Porter Cable with Meg's MF system and M105 with a dash of D300 to decrease dusting. Many areas took up to 5 sets of compounding plus 1 finishing set and I still wasn't 100% happy with the defect removal, but I was running out of time! I'd say it's 90% corrected.
I used liberal amounts of tape because I wasn't going to take any chance of damaging trim on this car.
I captured a few 50/50s, but really couldn't afford to set up too many as I had to work as fast as possible to finish on time.
Those are all the 50/50's I have. If I had this car for several more days, I'd have definitely taken more as I love a good dramatic 50/50 on a black car!
Here are the only pictures I have taken with a decent camera (my wife's backup camera):
(before polishing the wheels)
iPhone pictures:
LSPs were Prima Amigo, Adam's Americana, and Adam's Detail Spray. Glass with Stoner's, trim and wheels with Adam's metal polish, tires with Adam's Super VRT, interior very quickly done with Eisnsett 1Z and then Adam's Interior conditioner. It's funny, I've moved on from many Adam's products, but I just happened to use a lot of them for this detail as they worked well on this car.
Anyway, I apologize for the lack of "after" pictures. The car placed top 25 in a field of over 100 VERY nice cars that nearly all cost more than my friend paid for this Chevelle. I think that's a success.
Thanks for looking!
The car was to enter a car show today (Saturday) and the car was dropped off on Tuesday evening. This seems like a lot of time to complete the job, but I work a regular 9-5 and also a second job, often until 7-8pm. Time was limited so the pictures are as well.
On top of this, my wife is a professional photographer who shot a wedding in Savannah today so she left with the good photography gear yesterday, which means most of the pictures are from my iPhone.
Here is the car as it arrived at my house:
I began the detail with the usual two bucket wash, using Dawn dish soap and APC to ensure there was no wax remaining on the finish. The paint is 6 years old and I don't think it has been waxed since new. I also believe it was washed with scouring pads as I've never seen paint this bad.
Here's the brand new clay bar after 1/4 of the hood:
I flipped it over and this fresh side is after one white racing stripe on the hood:
So now lets check for defects. I wouldn't have to look very hard!
Ok, so I have my work cut out for me!!
My choice ended up being my Porter Cable with Meg's MF system and M105 with a dash of D300 to decrease dusting. Many areas took up to 5 sets of compounding plus 1 finishing set and I still wasn't 100% happy with the defect removal, but I was running out of time! I'd say it's 90% corrected.
I used liberal amounts of tape because I wasn't going to take any chance of damaging trim on this car.
I captured a few 50/50s, but really couldn't afford to set up too many as I had to work as fast as possible to finish on time.
Those are all the 50/50's I have. If I had this car for several more days, I'd have definitely taken more as I love a good dramatic 50/50 on a black car!
Here are the only pictures I have taken with a decent camera (my wife's backup camera):
(before polishing the wheels)
iPhone pictures:
LSPs were Prima Amigo, Adam's Americana, and Adam's Detail Spray. Glass with Stoner's, trim and wheels with Adam's metal polish, tires with Adam's Super VRT, interior very quickly done with Eisnsett 1Z and then Adam's Interior conditioner. It's funny, I've moved on from many Adam's products, but I just happened to use a lot of them for this detail as they worked well on this car.
Anyway, I apologize for the lack of "after" pictures. The car placed top 25 in a field of over 100 VERY nice cars that nearly all cost more than my friend paid for this Chevelle. I think that's a success.
Thanks for looking!
