Just the hood....

[usdm]

I never really gave any thought to how long a

certain task would take until I read this thread . I just like doing

the work, and sometimes I just loose track of

time.



I did this for a co-worker recently. The paint is basically

trashed, but I figured i could not really do any worse to

it. i was shocked to find out later that the hood took

almost 3 hours to get it looking better..

wash

repeated paint cleaning (decon 2x and claying 2x)

Wet sand with Unigrit 2500, then 3000 papers

HiTemp Heavy cut with a wool pad

Menzerna IP with a Megs polish pad,

Menzerna FPII with polish pad

Hi Temp Bahama via Mak D/a w/ finish pad



Save for the wax step, all the compound and polish work

was done with a rotary, so you can imagine how long it

would've taken with a PC.



Before

After

Sorry about the pics. I forgot to take one of the

front after (like the first pic. But trust me when I

tell you that it was a significant improvment.

 

[X-Trail]

Definetly a nice improvement. Whatdo you think cause the hood to look that bad??? Clearcoat failure? I received hoods like those before. The reading on my ETG says 2.2. I just do an intensive polish and final polish. The hood was too thin for me to do anything else anyway.

 

[usdm]

Thanks.



The owner only took it to automated car washes since

he first got it. And when it didn't go to the car wash, he did

it himself. In that time the hood was painted twice to correct

a rust problem. But from what I could see, the shop that

did the job had no clue ( rust came back up in the same

areas he wanted them to fix). Since the car was going to

be totally repainted again, he let me go nuts on the hood.

Hopefully, he'll take to my dad's shop, so we can do

the repaint.



Believe it or not, what you see in the first 2 pictures is not

even heavy swirling per se, but a thick layer of something

used by him or the car wash he used to frequent. He

mentioned to me of using Blue coral wash n wax; maybe

that helped contribute to the general mess the paint was

in.