1957 Ford F-100 Detailed

[Rob T]

Mike made a post that reminded me of a detail job that I did on my friend's 57 Ford F-100 a couple of years ago (with regard to "pin holes"). You will see those in one of the "after" pics below.

I went over to my friends new house (that he built himself), which has an 1800 s.f. shop, to detail his 1957 Ford F-100 pickup. It was nice having such a big shop to work in, plenty of room and decent lighting (he may add some more lights).

Anyway, he bought this truck from a father and son who had it as a joint project. They painted it themselves...unfortunately. My friend went ahead and had just the lower portion of the two tone paint repainted to a gunmetal metallic (it was an ugly light blue before). He left the top paint (cream color) as he plans on doing a total restoration down the line, so he just wanted it to look "decent" for now (until he finishes his '55 Chevy which can be seen in the background of one of the pics).

The cream color paint was a HUGE mess. This stuff looks like it was applied with rollers!

As you can see from the before pictures, there was virtually no gloss, reflection, depth, or clarity to the paint. It looked like someone had taken sandpaper to it. There was a lot of water etching as well.

We didn't expect miracles, but I thought I could get it looking quite a bit better than it did by using a good rubbing compound via the Makita rotary. It seemed to be a perfect candidate for the new (at the time) M105.

The M105 actually turned out to be somewhat of a PITA for me to use. Very big learning curve with this stuff! I started out using a yellow LC cutting pad (6.5"), and was pretty disappointed with the initial results. It wasn't bringing the paint back much at all. I increased the speed to about 1800 rpms, which seemed to help some. But the biggest problem was the working time, and the "flashing" (I believe that is the term for it: the 105 would dry on the paint and not come off with the buffer).

After going over the hood with the 105 and yellow foam a couple times, and still being disappointed, I switched over to the purple foamed wool. Wow! What a difference this made! I was finally getting better correction AND a much better finish! The main reason I used the yellow foam to begin with was that I only had 2 PFW pads available to me, so I thought I would do the majority of correction with the foam first.

After this "experiment", I can say that I will never use foam again for cutting. Wool all the way. I probably could have used something with a little more cut than the PFW, but the PFW worked pretty darn good in terms of both cutting and finishing.

The 105 was still a bit difficult to use, even with the PFW though. The working time didn't increase, and I was still getting the flashing, but to a slightly less extent.

In any event, a quick summary of my process:

1) ONR wash

2) Clay (ONR mixed per their recommendations for clay lube)

3) Yellow LC foam with M105 on cream portions of truck, followed with PFW and M105, 1800 rpms.

4) PFW with SIP on cream portion of truck

5) 106ff on gunmetal paint with white finishing pad (paint was in pretty good shape, with just a few swirls)

6) Alcohol wipe down.

7) DWG via PC at #5 with black pad

8) FK1 1000p LSP

9) FK1 425 final wipe down

10) FK1 108 on tires

First, the before pictures. Gloss? Depth? Shine? Where are you?

[Rob T]

And the "after" shots.

Despite the difficulties I had using the M105, the final results were very good. I don't know when I will have the opportunity to work on a vehicle that had paint this bad, but when I do, I will keep trying to fine tune my process with the M105. My friend had some 3M Perfect-It II, which I tried briefly. It was much easier to work with, but the results were not as impressive, so I kept using the M105.

Sorry that the color balance is off in some of these pics. There was a combination of natural and flourescent lighting (and halogen from the side) which my D70 had a hard time handling.





This is the shot where you can see the "pin holes" or solvent popping, which, according to Mike, occur when the paint was sprayed. Since this was a home/garage paint job, there is no surprise that this occurred:


As you can see in the following picture, the paint is certainly still not perfect. In fact, the drawback to buffing it out is that you can now see more of the paint defects that were inherent in how the truck was painted. Still some RIDS remaining too, but much much better than before.



I have to add that I really like DWG. The paint looked glossier and wetter after application:






The Menzerna 106ff with white pad worked well on the gunmetal paint and removed the minor swirls that were present:









I enjoyed doing this job, as the results/improvement made it worth it. It really helps when you see noticeable improvement after working so hard! Of course, working on classic vehicles like this and hanging out with friends doesn't hurt either!

Now if my friend would just hurry up and finish his motor for the '55 Bel Air, I could get my hands on that!

[Rsurfer]

Very nice job. Next time just use wool for bad paint. Love that 55 Chevy.

[Rob T]

Very nice job. Next time just use wool for bad paint.

Absolutely learned that lesson! This was a couple years ago. I've since done a few more jobs (including a full wet sand) where wool was an absolute requirement.

This job would have gone faster and easier if I had just used the wool to begin with. I just didn't have enough confidence at the time.

Love that 55 Chevy.

Me too. Like I said, I really want to get my hands on that one so I can make it look its best.

[sullysdetailing]

Ill take that truck any day of the week, great work

[Mike Phillips]

Amazing transformation.

That is one fine looking 1957 Ford Truck, you don't see these very often as compared to so many other restored or hot-rodded truck. It's actually very stylish even after all these years.

Nice work giving this truck a show car finish.

[Rob T]

Ill take that truck any day of the week, great work

Thanks! It is a cool looking truck, isn't it?

Amazing transformation.

That is one fine looking 1957 Ford Truck, you don't see these very often as compared to so many other restored or hot-rodded truck. It's actually very stylish even after all these years.

Nice work giving this truck a show car finish.

Thanks a lot Mike, I appreciate that!

My friend bought this truck for the reasons that you mention: it isn't a very common truck to fix up/restore for some reason, so it is more unique.

I completely agree with you regarding the style after all these years. Timeless design that won't go out of style.

[Dusty Bottoms]

That is a beautiful truck. You did a great job, I doubt the paint has ever looked so good.

[Marc08EX]

Wow that's an amazing transformation! That paint is just oxidized as hell... Did your pads turn white really quick? Was it the original paint job?

[Shade Tree]

BEAUTIFUL!

How did the truck end up in that condition ......... looks like someone obviously put some money into its restoration.

The '55 sure has my attention!