Pictures: 1991 Alfa Romeo - Porter Cable 7424XP Ultimate Challenge!

[FrankS]

I was surprised how it turned out...

Me too and with using a PC! What a difference between before and after.

[custmsprty]

Ditto here, my dad had a 1967 Alfa so can't wait to see this transformation.

[antti@561detailing]

It really did a great job. Pc is great tool.

Me too and with using a PC! What a difference between before and after.

[krumlauf]

This was a quick shot of the studio while we were waiting for the wax to dry.

Here's a crappy phone pic I took afterwards...more of a teaser to Mike's awesome after pics.
Thanks Mike for the opportunity to come out, learn some techniques and meet some new people.
I will certainly return to another detailing night and start ordering tools and products to maintain my cars!

[TexasFinest]

Can't wait to see up close results...

[WRAPT C5Z06]

Sub'd

[Mprtjn]

Had a great time! Learned some things too. The Porter Cables really did a good job bringing that Alpha back. Mrs. Robinson would be proud!

Pat

[refreshauto]

cant wait to see the afters

[aim4squirrels]

Good Lord! It looks like a platoon of strippers danced on that hood.

If you took all that out with a porter cable, that should pretty much shut the door on any talk about the PC not having enough correcting ability. I'll assume you didn't use the original pad that came attached to the machine.

[Mike Phillips]

Good Lord! It looks like a platoon of strippers danced on that hood.

If you took all that out with a porter cable, that should pretty much shut the door on any talk about the PC not having enough correcting ability.

Here's the deal...

The first time I saw this car was at our Cars & Coffee Show and when I inspected the paint it was only using full sun. Here are the pictures I took using just sunlight.

Pictures: 5th Autogeek Cars & Coffee with Dennis Gage


This is Bill and this is his 1991 Alfa Romeo Spider. Words cannot describe the pain my eyes felt when I finally had a chance to inspect the paint with the sun shining overhead.



















Now follow me....

The the put the focus on the holograms. Holograms are a very specific type of scratch pattern inflicted from the mis-use of a rotary buffer.

So I thought to myself, no problem... we can remove the holograms using a simple Porter Cable... and we did.


But after removing the shallow holograms all the deeper scratches stuck out like a sore thumb. I'm sorry to say I didn't take any "before" pictures of the thousands of deeper straight line scratches that only became visible under the FLORESCENT light, not in the sun shots I took at Cars & Coffee.


This is a picture Robert took using his iPhone and while it gives you a good idea as too how scratched up the paint was... had I used my Canon I could have captured the horrendous scratches that we could all see with our eyes while standing in front of the car.

It looked like somebody used a lawn rake and raked the hood.

So we started with the Porter Cable 7424XP and we did remove the swirls and the paint looked a thousand times better and the owner Doc was happy as a tick on Bloodhound.


But I knew we could do better. In fact I grabbed a 6" Rupes Blue Foam Cutting pad, put it on the Porter Cable and as about 10 guys watched on in quickly removed a huge section of very deep straight line scratches.

This one section took the finish quality of the paint to an even higher level than what we accomplished using Lake Country orange 5.5" foam cutting pads.

Then I though... a heck... lets just get out the Flex 3401's and be done with it... so next I grabbed 2 Flex 3401 Forced Rotation Dual Action Polishers, two 6.5" Hybrid Orange Foam Cutting Pads and Robert and I each buffed two more sections on the hood.

After wiping off the Blackfire SRC Compound residue and inspecting the results the paint now looked a MILLION times better.

So it's not that the Porter Cable 7424XP didn't work because it did. It removed all the shallow holograms, swirls and scratches.

It's just the Flex is a direct drive tool and offers a LOT more power and what it did was remove all the deeper scratches and it did it faster than the Porter Cable.


Here's the BIG PICTURE...


I had around 5-6 NEW guys at this class and it was important to start them out machine polishing with what I consider an ENTRY LEVEL TOOL. And if you've always worked by hand when you move up to a Porter Cable 7424XP with good products and pads you're blown away by what you can do machine as compared to what you were able to do only working by hand.

So this was a great way to introduce some of the new guys to machine polishing in a very safe way and really demonstrate the difference between working by hand and working by machine which was also the topic of laster weekend's Cars & Coffee Tech Session where I worked by hand and Nick worked by machine.

Pictures: 6th Cars & Coffee at Autogeek







THEN....

To show both the new guys and everyone there just how much faster and effective a true workhorse of a paint polisher the Flex 3401 is I let the new guys test out the Flex 3401.

Previously that night they gained HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE using the Porter Cable and then later by using the Flex 3401 they were able to see and experience the difference between a free rotating spindle assembly type tool and a gear-driven forced rotation, forced oscillation tool.

And down the road, if they're interested, they can get the tool that suits them best.

So last night's project was a stellar project not just because of the results we achieved but because a lot of local car guys were able to take their knowledge and skills to a much higher level.

I know a number of guys now have the confidence to go out into their own garage and tackle their own car projects. For example Norm is going to remove the swirls out of his 1955 Chevy including rotary buffer holograms.


So we started out with Porter Cable dual action polishers and removed the swirls and then switched over to the Flex 3401 to really perfect the paint to the degree that was possible.

I'll assume you didn't use the original pad that came attached to the machine.

Nope, but I have an article on that....


The white foam pad that comes with a Porter Cable Polisher






Now hang tight as I post the after pictures....