1967 Starline Deville - Extreme Makeover

[dickwitham]

I cannot wait to see the finished product! It's looking great!

You may have already addressed this, but do you have any plans for correcting the chrome pieces? This is probably a question I can already answer after admiring your prior work, haha!

[craigr]

Looks great Mike. I love all the 50/50 shots, amazing transformation. What are your plans for the bright-work? If you plan to polish it, could you include a short write-up on your process.

Craig

[Mike.Phillips@Autogeek]

Originally Posted by dickwitham

You may have already addressed this, but do you have any plans for correcting the chrome pieces? This is probably a question I can already answer after admiring your prior work, haha!

AT this time I'm not going to have anything re-chromed. What I want to do is make some kind of rubber gasket for some of larger chrome components so there isn't just metal screwed down tight against 42 year old gel-coat. There's at least one place on the bow where the gel-coat is chipped because of this so there needs to be some kind of gasket between metal and gel-coat.

I will polish the chrome and then seal it. Except for some scratches and a little pitting, overall it's in very good condition.

Originally Posted by craigr

Looks great Mike. I love all the 50/50 shots, amazing transformation. What are your plans for the bright-work? If you plan to polish it, could you include a short write-up on your process.

Craig

Time is always an issue here at AG, we have an Extreme Makeover this Thursday, a Porsche Class this Saturday and then behind the scenes were getting ready for SEMA and then the weekend after SEMA I'll be flying down to Dallas, Texas for the Detailing Class at Nick Chapman's shop with over 30 people signed up for that.

Priority one is to get the gel-coat restored and protected. I'll polish the brightwork to some level but it will probably be more of the KISS approach at least for now.

KISS = Keep It Simple Simon


Haven't decided what to use on the other half of the bow, maybe Meguiar's, maybe Menzerna?

[Jokeman]

Mike, give the Menzerna a run. I think you will like it.

[Mirror Detailing]

Darn still no Meguiars Marine line yet...

[Mister B]

Looking better and better every day.

It’s probably been at least a year ago or so, but I remember you did some compounding on this boat or at least part of the boat before. Is the old gel coat that sensitive to oxidation that you already have to compound it again this year, or is it just the fact that the boat was already so oxidized from years of neglect before you bought it that you now have to keep up on the finish more often or it will revert back to it’s original condition quicker?

[Jokeman]

That color seems to oxidize quickly when in the sun. My father in-law has a 1973 MFG in the same color. I buffed it out this past spring and it needs to be done again, and we have a short summer up in Maine.

[Mike.Phillips@Autogeek]

Originally Posted by Mister B

It’s probably been at least a year ago or so, but I remember you did some compounding on this boat or at least part of the boat before. Is the old gel coat that sensitive to oxidation that you already have to compound it again this year, or is it just the fact that the boat was already so oxidized from years of neglect before you bought it that you now have to keep up on the finish more often or it will revert back to it’s original condition quicker?

After I bought it, but before I did any Test Spots to see how easy or difficult it was to buff, I wrongly assumed it would be easy to remove the oxidation and restore a high gloss finish.

My mistake.

I scheduled it for an Extreme Makeover at Meguiar's and keep in mind, many, not all but many of the people that attend Extreme Makeover projects are not experienced with rotary buffers, they often times want to learn to use the rotary buffer but are not ready to dive into a full-on heavy compounding project using a rotary buffer.

At the very beginning of the Extreme Makeover I did some testing on the gel-coat and found it was buffing-out very hard, as in it was very hard to get good results easily using a rotary buffer.

So I more or less ended the EM at Meguiar's Garage that night and everyone worked on their own cars. There's a thread on MOL in the "Pictures from Extreme Makeovers" section of their forum and in that thread I actually explained all of the above also. (Lucky me, I get to type so much).

Good memory and thanks for asking. Also note, nothing has changed. It's still very hard to get great results. In the pictures I'm showing, there's a LOT of compounding going on using the rotary buffer behind the scenes followed with polishing and waxing. Doing these small section at at time is time intensive.

I will say that doing small sections at at time does take some of the paint out of the project. It would be a daunting task to tackle compounding the entire boat in one day plus all the polishing and waxing too. Not that it couldn't be done it's just it would take all the fun out of the project.

[Mister B]

Yea, I remember you stopping the Extreme Makeover on the boat that night. I also remember seeing a picture later on where you had finished buffing the top of the bow. I was actually surprised how oxidized the bow was again when I saw the picture of it in the Autogeek garage. I guess the old gel coat does not hold up well to the Hot CA and FL sun and oxidizes back up again fairly quickly.

Thanks for sharing the process with us. Looking forward to the rest.

[sullysdetailing]

Mike that came out great. I bet you cant wait to get the whole boat done