1940 Nash attacked by a rotary noob - Pinnacle Auto Detail - CT

[PinnacleAutoCT]

1940 Nash attacked by a rotary noob - Pinnacle Auto Detail - CT



Hey guys, I haven’t posted in a while and figured this was a good car to get back into the swing of things with.

Like the title says, this is a 1940 Nash and the paint was absolutely hammered by an inexperienced rotary user. The owner’s son had seen me correcting a few of their cars (1965 Malibu, Dodge 1500, etc) and wanted to try his hand at polishing, buying a Dewalt 849, some pads and polish.

He quickly got in over his head and the father called me in to get things looking proper.

Upon arrival the car looked decent, reflecting light and showing good shine under the florescent lighting, but a quick inspection with my LED headlamp showed heavy marring and lots of rotary swirls.

Given that the paint was quite old and relatively soft, I decided to shoot for around 80% defect removal, which would hopefully remove the rotary trails and most of the straight-line marring, while still leaving a healthy amount of paint behind.



Before:

The car actually looked decent under the dim overhead lighting:

https://c7.staticflickr.com/1/719/31614359046_efabddc35d_b.jpg



Further inspection with a 150 lumen LED light showed the true condition of the paint:


https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/433/31278752640_a71fd4a6d2_b.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/1/373/30841366113_bf84af6ea6_b.jpg




Compound dust still speckled the fender:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/588/30809945344_485fe0bb9d_b.jpg



Here you can see a mixture of deeper vertical scratches and some heavy marring from improper wipe-downs:

https://c8.staticflickr.com/1/67/31535463671_e971f21d7d_b.jpg

https://c7.staticflickr.com/1/705/31278648510_ee63c509c9_b.jpg





The rotary swirls were especially apparent on the driver’s door, I can only imagine what this must have looked like on a sunny day:

https://c5.staticflickr.com/6/5578/31614611676_9d25ef19eb_b.jpg

https://c4.staticflickr.com/1/703/30841331683_83b1362131_b.jpg



Here you can view the overlap from the son’s polishing effort on the door spilling into the intermediate panel. Given these polishing techniques which probably were hard on the panel edges, and the age of the paint, I felt it would be best to avoid going for perfection with my correction process:


https://c5.staticflickr.com/6/5601/30809916164_002ca98862_b.jpg

https://c5.staticflickr.com/1/760/30809911844_0080db0160_b.jpg




The fender tops unfortunately weren’t spared the rotary treatment either:

https://c3.staticflickr.com/1/404/31505069562_d0d6614280_b.jpg

https://c3.staticflickr.com/1/640/31505062442_8abe0594dd_b.jpg



This is a little hard to make out, but it’s a gouge that would later be touched up:

https://c3.staticflickr.com/1/492/31614579586_ce76364689_b.jpg



Some panels were untouched by the rotary, revealing the swirly mess that had accumulated over the course of decades:

https://c3.staticflickr.com/1/340/31614577466_1505d56b02_b.jpg

https://c4.staticflickr.com/1/626/31651209315_2a02305cc4_b.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/1/133/31651203025_b1d32dba84_b.jpg




To start my process the car was wiped down with Optimum No Rinse at QD dilution to prevent water from pooling in any cracks or crevices and causing rust. Next the paint was treated with Meguiar’s #7 to restore some oils to the single stage, even though it didn’t appear to be oxidized or excessively dry.

I then ran through a bunch of different polishes and polish/compound mixtures, finally settling on HD Polish on Lake Country black finishing pads, with the Rupes 21 and 75E polishers.

I did my cutting work between speeds 5-6 with moderate pressure for 3-5 passes, and finished around speeds 4-4.5 with light pressure for an additional pass or two.

The finishing passes at lower speeds and lighter pressure while using proper technique to maintain pad rotation allowed me to leave behind a properly refined finish without any micromarring.

The paint was then sealed with CarPro Reload, the whitewalls were cleaned with OPC @ 3:1 dilution, and the chrome bumpers and wheels were lightly polished with HD Speed, LC black pads and the Rupes 75E, and were then sealed with Reload.



Here are the final results:

The LED light showed an 80%+ correction rate, massively improved from the initial condition:

https://c5.staticflickr.com/1/134/31504965972_e71ccd15b6_b.jpg




Some deeper defects still remained, but it just wasn’t worthwhile to eat through more paint chasing them:

https://c3.staticflickr.com/1/628/31504981802_78cd6fa60a_b.jpg

https://c7.staticflickr.com/1/763/31614373646_83d856e8bd_b.jpg

https://c8.staticflickr.com/1/753/30841245783_378fc45378_b.jpg

https://c7.staticflickr.com/1/275/31278619710_dcee84cc06_b.jpg

https://c8.staticflickr.com/1/315/31535376031_359e50dcff_b.jpg

https://c5.staticflickr.com/1/383/30809849724_69a9e6474b_b.jpg

https://c7.staticflickr.com/1/148/31505017582_68479b1496_b.jpg

https://c7.staticflickr.com/1/135/31278528070_c109ca6aa0_b.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5590/31278521120_0433f8d45d_b.jpg

https://c3.staticflickr.com/1/372/31278513730_9b59f10690_b.jpg

https://c6.staticflickr.com/1/499/31651059565_07e1c91d60_b.jpg



These fenders are great for reflection shots:

https://c4.staticflickr.com/1/653/31651051915_6d0ef7d135_b.jpg

https://c8.staticflickr.com/1/495/31651041175_708322a325_b.jpg

https://c5.staticflickr.com/1/642/30809728404_e4b3b1969a_b.jpg

https://c3.staticflickr.com/1/766/30809736594_57ed09e764_b.jpg

https://c3.staticflickr.com/1/128/30809743594_5f9c63da88_b.jpg





Like a black mirror!:

https://c2.staticflickr.com/1/221/31535296441_748da24470_b.jpg

https://c5.staticflickr.com/1/768/30809757284_b2da6d66eb_b.jpg

https://c4.staticflickr.com/1/415/31651140155_8fb6187d3e_b.jpg

https://c4.staticflickr.com/1/60/30841218643_7909be5906_b.jpg

https://c6.staticflickr.com/1/380/31651030325_68d4546b98_b.jpg


Thanks for looking, comments and questions are welcome!


:)

[GSKR]

Very nice work.

[Belair]

What a beautiful Nash Mike, I can't remember seeing one in decades. Did you do anything to the running boards?

[lane5515]

Nice turn around! It's cool seeing some of these older cars brought back to life. Thanks for sharing.

[BryanH]

Wow, that paint was swirl city. Great work! That must have been fun to go over.

[Sizzle Chest]

Great save! Very nice work!

[Mike@DedicatedPerfection]

Man that black paint was hammered from a newb with a rotary! smh

Beautiful work bring it back to life!

Thanks for sharing.

[Mike Phillips]

Like the title says, this is a 1940 Nash and the paint was absolutely hammered by an inexperienced rotary user.

The owner’s son had seen me correcting a few of their cars (1965 Malibu, Dodge 1500, etc) and wanted to try his hand at polishing, buying a Dewalt 849, some pads and polish. He quickly got in over his head and the father called me in to get things looking proper.



Great to see the son getting excited about detailing. The DeWALT 849 is a monster of rotary buffer to start out learning to machine polish paint. Maybe you could introduce him to some of your orbital polishers and keep him interested. Besides being easier to learn how to use and much safer to use, any quality orbital polish is a great compliment to a rotary buffer. With both tool a person can tackle any car detailing project.

Also, it's a good idea to "learn" how to use a rotary buffer on something that's NOT important, not a special interest car like this 1940 Nash.





decent, reflecting light and showing good shine under the florescent lighting, but a quick inspection with my LED headlamp showed heavy marring and lots of rotary swirls.



Thanks for pointing this out. I do this too, that is explain to people that in order to see the true condition of the paint finish you need more than one time of light.

Yesterday I found an expert on Facebook once again pointing out that the car I was working on already looked like a show car. I explained to him had he read one of the other posts I made on Facebook showing the true before condition he would have seed the swirl pictures I used to document the true condition.

Detailers and even enthusiasts need more than one type of light to accurately access the true condition of the paint and to also check their results.





Given that the paint was quite old and relatively soft, I decided to shoot for around 80% defect removal, which would hopefully remove the rotary trails and most of the straight-line marring, while still leaving a healthy amount of paint behind.



That's the professional approach. Doing what's best for the paint, the car and the owner.






To start my process the car was wiped down with Optimum No Rinse at QD dilution to prevent water from pooling in any cracks or crevices and causing rust.



Again, in my opinion this is the correct approach for classic cars. Most of the classics, muscle cars and streetrods we work on here at Autogeek are cleaned using a waterless wash so as not to introduce running water, (like from a water hose), and flooding all the places you can never reach with water where it can cause rust issues. It's simply a professional courtesy to the owner.

For the recored, the expert on Facebook I mentioned above also took me to task for using a waterless wash instead of a normal wash to the 1970 Cuda I recently detailed and documented the process for here (http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/how-articles/106445-how-use-griots-garage-detail-your-car-detail-job-richard-griot-would-proud.html).






Next the paint was treated with Meguiar’s #7 to restore some oils to the single stage, even though it didn’t appear to be oxidized or excessively dry.



That is in my opinion the safest approach for working on and restoring antique paint when it's IMPORTANT to the owner (and to you), to do everything humanly possible to insure the paint is brought to its maximum potential and avoid repainting with modern paint.

That said, if the paint is old/antique and still shiny, or in this case where someone else has already buffed the paint and more than likely removed any oxidation then the correct technique for using #7 would be to hand apply it or machine apply it with a soft foam polishing pad an any orbital polisher AFTER the last machine correction step, (usually the polishing step), and BEFORE the paint is sealed with a wax or paint sealant.

An example of this would be the 1989 Mercedes-Benz we detailed over the summer. The paint was already smooth, clear and shiny so after compounding and polishing we then applied the #7 to gorge the antique paint with the TS Oils in the Meguiar's #7 and then sealed the paint with Wolfgang Fuzion.

Pictures - 1989 Mercedes-Benz - Low Mileage Beauty All Original Beauty! (http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/pictures-thursday-night-detailing-classes/102201-pictures-1989-mercedes-benz-low-mileage-beauty-all-original-beauty.html)







I then ran through a bunch of different polishes and polish/compound mixtures, finally settling on HD Polish on Lake Country black finishing pads, with the Rupes 21 and 75E polishers. I did my cutting work between speeds 5-6 with moderate pressure for 3-5 passes, and finished around speeds 4-4.5 with light pressure for an additional pass or two.

The finishing passes at lower speeds and lighter pressure while using proper technique to maintain pad rotation allowed me to leave behind a properly refined finish without any micromarring.



Sounds like you dialed in a perfect polishing process.

Just to comment not so much for you Mike but for anyone that will read this into the future... the softest paint there is is single stage black paint. The reason why is because when it comes to paint hardness the main factor is the pigment type. The pigment affects the resin to either make the resin harder or softer. The pigment to make the color black is Carbon Black and this pigment is very soft so it makes the paint very soft.

What this means to us detailers is that single stage paint is the easiest to correct because the paint is very soft so it abrades very easy. Keep this in mind and be sure to test the least aggressive process when correcting antique, single stage paint instead of diving in head first using a aggressive compound. You might be surprised at how much correction you can get without going overboard with aggressive compounds, pads and even tool.






The paint was then sealed with CarPro Reload, the whitewalls were cleaned with OPC @ 3:1 dilution, and the chrome bumpers and wheels were lightly polished with HD Speed, LC black pads and the Rupes 75E, and were then sealed with Reload.




And the beauty shots tell the story.

Amazing restoration an a very cool car. I've personally never detailed a 1940 Nash but would love to one day.

Thank you for taking the time to stop your work, take pictures to document the project and then after all the work taking the time to process the pictures add to this write-up and then add the words to tell the story. I know how much time and work goes into creating a write-up that will inspire others to attempt what you have done and I appreciate your time and passion to share with others.

I don't use the bowdown emoticon very often but this thread deserves it...


:bowdown:


Nice work Mike


:dblthumb2:


p.s.

Hope you don't mind but I went through your post and removed all the extra code inserted by flickr that junks up the thread.


:)

[Jaretr1]

Nice work!

[PinnacleAutoCT]

Thanks everyone!

Belair- I just wiped down the running boards (might not have been done in the pics), as I didn't want to make them slippery by dressing them.


Mike- Thanks! I appreciate the kind words from an AG online legend. I'll have to try #7 as the last step before sealing on the next single stage I get my hands on in this condition. As far as the son goes, he actually maintains some of the other cars I've corrected with ONR, we'll see if he wants to learn to polish properly. That guy on Facebook sounds like he has more opinions than knowledge, oh well, they're out there and occasionally they won't stop spreading their misinformation.

[pilotpip]

Nice save.

Are those your antlers on the floor? Looks like a nice deer!

[coles_paint_correction]

Great job and save.

[Mike Phillips]

Mike- Thanks! I appreciate the kind words from an AG online legend.



Well you saved that car from having to be repainted.





I'll have to try #7 as the last step before sealing on the next single stage I get my hands on in this condition.



It's really the best protocol to follow. Worked great on Bob McKee's Mercedes-Benz, the paint on his car looks brand new.





As far as the son goes, he actually maintains some of the other cars I've corrected with ONR, we'll see if he wants to learn to polish properly.



Here's an old saying that fits here,

Each one teach one...






That guy on Facebook sounds like he has more opinions than knowledge, oh well, they're out there and occasionally they won't stop spreading their misinformation.



Yeah everyone with a thumb and a phone is an expert on Facebook now days.


:laughing:

[RippyD]

Thanks for sharing this. Really interesting for us hobbyists to read too.

[dlc95]

Reading a post like this, on a cold, snowy winter day - warms the heart.