Newbie single stage paint restoration

[TheBandit]

I appreciate all the kind words. The reality is my car still has a ways to go and I think there are some things I will never be able to really fix. You can't see all the imperfections in the photos, but I will try taking some closer shots and video before I do my next round of work.

I took advantage of the Autogeek "PRIME25" sale to pick up a big bottle of the Pinancle Jeweling Wax (AIO) and some additional pads. Hopefully I'll be ready next time I get the wild hair to work on the paint. In the meantime I'll be driving!

[Blushingmule]

Hi Bandit,

What a great car, job, and thread!

Bob

[Jeremy5431]

Great write up and nice car! One question though. Would you have saved clay if you applied #7 before claying?




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[TheBandit]

Great write up and nice car! One question though. Would you have saved clay if you applied #7 before claying?

Sorry for the very late reply. I think I did the right thing using the clay before applying the #7. There was a lot of contamination on the paint and I think it would have interfered with the #7 penetrating the paint. The car felt and looked a lot cleaner after doing the clay.

[Gav'sPurpleZ]

hell of a bump here, i went through the entire thread.

The car looks amazing !!
Love me some classic chevys !

[TheBandit]

Thanks Gav. It's really still an unfinished project because the whole car still needs to be polished. But the car is looking and photographing like I had never seen before. It came a long way! I can see why detailers find satisfaction in their work!

I'll be getting back to this again soon. The car needs wax again and I've picked up some Pinacle Jewling Wax (sort of an AIO as I understand it?) for the next round, but I'm going to do my best with the trim still in place this time.

[RobertJ34]

This was great to read through, awesome documentation!
The work looks phenomenal!

Looking forward to seeing it after a polish.

[Gav'sPurpleZ]

Collinite 476s or even Blackfire One Step would look awesome on this car.

We are all ready for updates as they are available !

[TheBandit]

Thank you!

I decided to take on a side project and refresh my grill area before doing any more work on the paint. Looking at the photos of my car above you may have noticed the filler panel between the grill and bumper has some areas body color and some areas gray. That's because the body-color paint has chipped and peeled off the plastic over the years since I painted it around 1999. It's been bothering me a lot more since I cleaned up the paint last year and I finally had enough of it.



I decided to take the whole grill assembly off the car and make some changes. First I decided to give the grill an "SS" style blacked-out finish where just the top and bottom fins of the grill are exposed. After thoroughly cleaning the grill, I masked the top and bottom fins.





Then I used a self-etching primer.



And finally I shot it with Krylon Satin Black.








Next, rather than strip down the old filer panel, I decided to start fresh with a new one from AMD. I gave the whole panel a scuff-down with 150 grit and painted it Rustoleum Metallic Titanium Silver







Years ago cut off one end of the old filler panel and underlying metal support so it could be removed and installed easily without removing a fender. I did the same with this one. No one will ever see this, but it makes taking the grill and filler panel assembly in and out a breeze.





Next I decided to tackle the headlight bezels. Looking closely at the originals, a lot of the edges that were supposed to be exposed chrome had overspray on them.



So before doing anything, I carefully removed the overspray with steel wool.



The ribs on either side of the headlights are exposed chrome on the top, front, and bottom faces. I tried masking one off and decided it was just way to intricate and time consuming for masking. So I decided just to mask and spray the centers and save the areas between the ribs for later.







I spayed the bezels the same color as the grill (Krylon Satin Black), then I used a little trick to decant the paint for brushing.





What I did above is attached a bendy straw to the nozzle of the paint can, then I poked it through some plastic wrap on the top of a glass jar. After spraying enough paint into the jar, I let it it out for about 6 hours so all the propellant could make it's way out of the paint - otherwise it would become a volcano when shaken or blow it's cap off.

Next I took the freshly decanted paint and hand brushed the areas between the ribs.



Unpainted on the left vs. fresh first coat on the right. I did two coats to cover this area. The decanted paint was a bit thin for brushing but it did the job.



With everything cleaned up and repainted, I reassembled the front end. Here's what I have now.









Now that the grill is taken care of, I'm ready to start polish and wax! I'll be sure to come back and update when I get that done.

[Mike Phillips]

Compound: After stumbling on your thread of doing the single stage car that's literally on the bottle of Meguiars Ultimate Compound I thought I'd give that a shot.

It's so nice to read something and then think,

Hey... I have an article on that


Meguiar's Ultimate Compound History


Meguiar's Ultimate Compound and SwirlX

Based on your advice, I may try polish only, but if you look at the photos/video I was thinking I would at least need to compound the scratches on the rear panel and some of the oxidation on the quarter panels. What do you think? Should I just try polish first and then come back and use compound and re-polish on any areas that don't clean up?

Do a Test Spot with the polish first and then do a Test Spot using the compound and see how each section looks. Trunks and hood work best for test spots.

Polish:: I bought Meguiars M205. I was really unsure about what to buy especially because so much info online is not relevant to single stage paint. M80 compound and M205 were used in one of your articles on using no 7 to restore paint, so it was one of the first things I bought even before getting the DA.

That's a great polish.

Wax: Again I was lost in all the product information that seems to be mostly focused on base/clear. I landed on Meguiars Ultimate Liquid Wax. Is there any harm in trying it out and switching to a carnuba wax later if I'm dissatisfied?

That's do.... Are sure there's no carnauba in it?

THANK YOU for all the great help and advice. I wish I had bought more of these products from Autogeek to help support all the great info you provide here.

Your very welcome. My classes are just as good and just as detailed as the detailed info I share.

When I first stumbled on the forum I did not realize at all it was related to a store so I bought a lot of this stuff locally or through big retailers.

It seems obvious now but that was just my impression. Now that I see the connection, I will be sure to spend more of my money with you (as I did today with the Griots 3" polisher - can't wait to get it!)

Now that's an interesting comment. I wonder how many people extract info from the forum and don't realize we support the Autogeek.com store?


Keep up updated to your success.

Be sure to do some testing, sometimes old single stage paint simply don't like to be machine polished. I can think of two projects where this was true.