Wayne Carini from Chasing Classic Cars gets a visit from Ivan Karstuff and Autogeek!

[Mike Phillips]

Wayne Carini from Chasing Classic Cars gets a visit from Ivan Karstuff and Autogeek!





Last week Max, Ivan, Darlene and me took a trip to visit Wayne Carini at his real world working shop that you see on his TV show, Chasing Classic Cars. Here's the four of us standing in front of another authentic 1967 A.C. Cobra documented to be the fastest "original" A.C. Cobra after clocking 198 miles per hour.

From left to right...

Max, Darlene, Wayne and me...





Multi-Million Dollar Cars the norm for Wayne's shop...
Wayne has multi-million cars going through his shop everyday and Wayne asked me to spend some time with his painter and detailer on the art of polishing paint.

Here's a few pictures from the trip...

This is Wayne's classic car store, F40.com Motor Sports




While we were there Wayne and his production team were shooting new episodes for "Chasing Classic Cars".




Here's some of the cars in his show room, the A.C. Cobra is the real deal and a "Barn Find". Wayne sold this for a cool 2 million. While we were there he fired it up and took a child from the "Make a Wish" foundation for a ride! Wayne's pretty cool.












Also while we were there a car hauler arrived to drop off some recent cars cars from Wayne's adventures...




1932 Stutz DV 32
This is an all original 1932 Stutz DV 32 that Wayne bought out of Klamath Falls, Oregon. The paint appears to be original and in very worn condition. While I was at Wayne's shop, I taught his guys the Mike Phillips Method of restoring antique single stage paint on a 1954 all original Hudson Hornet and they are going to use these same techniques to restore the paint on this Stutz DV 32.

It actually runs and drives as you can see Wayne moving the car towards the shop.




Wayne opened the hood cowel so I could take a picture of the dual overhead cam engine...






The tires are all holding air...






Next off is a Dino Ferrari...






While a beautiful car, the paint is filled with swirls but I also worked with his team on proper machine polishing techniques to create a swirl-free, show car finish.







All Original 1954 Hudson Hornet
This is a 1954 Hudson Hornet that Wayne has been chasing since he was 16 years old, that's over 40 years that he's been chasing this one-owner car and his persistence finally paid off.

One of the things Wayne had me do while I was there was to show him my method for restoring antique, original single stage paint like on this Hudson Hornet. The paint is old, dry and brittle and what most "detailers" do is attack it with a compound and destroy the paint causing the owner to have to re-paint the car which is the last thing they want to do. Later I'll share some pictures of how this beauty came out...





1957 Corvette - NCRS Gold Certified
This is a NCRS Gold Certified 1957 Corvette that is certified to be 95% to 100% restored to "Typical Factory Production". While I was at Wayne's shop I also worked with Wayne's team on how to work on classics like this...

[57BORNTORUN]

Cool pics. I know from watching the show that he loves DINOS.

[Mike Phillips]

Cool pics. I know from watching the show that he loves DINOS.

There were probably 4-5, maybe more that I didn't actually see, in various stages of restoration. Lots of eye-candy throughout his shops...

[Mike@DedicatedPerfection]

Very cool to see Mike.

[Finemess]

Super Sweetness.

[Mike Phillips]

Not done yet...

The finish on the 1957 Corvette was nice, but there was room for improvement to really perfect the paint so it would look deep, dark and black with a swirl free finish under any light conditions.

The first thing I needed to do was to check the paint to see if it was a single stage finish or a basecoat/clearcoat paint system.






Pinnacle Advanced Swirl Remover is white in color so I used a white microfiber applicator pad to do my testing...




Putting a little passion behind the pad...




Yep, you can see both embedded dirt coming off and out of the paint and black pigment, so now I know I'm working on likely lacquer or enamel paint.




Single stage black paint is usually the softest paint there is due to the pigment type and often the resin type, since this car is very valuable I'm following my own good advice and testing the least aggressive product to get the job done. In this case it's Pinnacle Advanced Finishing Polish with a black LC Finishing pad on a Porter Cable 7424XP.




Max is always happy to help out as I do the work part...




After buffing a section and then wiping the residue off...





I next inspect the paint using the Autogeek Swirl Finder Light. The results look much better but I opt to move onto to the swirl remover with a white LC foam polishing pad.




Max supervises...






Here you can see the black pigment coming off the car and building up on the face of my buffing pad. This is why it's important to clean your pads often. You can't just keep adding fresh product to the face of a pad like this...





Section by section, I moved around the car removing the swirls off the front clip...




Done with the first step but I have two more steps to go...






While I'm working on the Corvette, Wayne is giving Max a car-by-car tour of the cars in this shop...




More to come? Of course...

[Klasse Act]

AWESOME CORVETTE! He loves his Ferrari's for sure and it shows, no script needed there!

Sent from my SPH-M930 using AG Online

[Audi X2]

Wayne and his operation are the real deal. It was great to meet him at Detail Fest and now his detailer will will be able to make the cars look as they should!

[Dr_Pain]

WOW!! Eye candy? I would be in full diabetic coma.

Thanks for the pics

I do have a silly question for you Mike. I see that you are wearing jeans. Ever had a mishap when leaning on a car polishing?

I would be scared to death to work on one of those precious antique cars and getting the metal rivets or better yet the metal fastening button to dig on the side, as I am leaning on the car. I tend to go all neurotic when working on cars, and wear my old scrubs....... and funny enough this is also the ONLY time I remove my wedding ring.

[CarAudiophile]

That's awesome! Long time watcher of the show!