Veterans Day Car Giveaway for Active Duty Member!


Mark Pieloch is the owner of one of the largest and most extraordinary collection of true American muscle cars, the American Muscle Car Museum. Mark is also very generous in many ways and a example of his generosity and caring is his giving away of a pristine condition 1994 Z28 Camaro to an active duty member of our military this Saturday at his museum in Melbourne, Florida.






A few weeks ago Ed Dedick, the Operation and Restoration Manager for the museum along with Jerry Frye, invited Autogeek.com to help restore the finish on this low mileage Camaro to create a true show car finish for the lucky winner.

Here's how the Camaro looked when I arrived to be a part of this project. From a distance the finish looks great! But wait until we inspect the paint with the Baggie Test and the SCANGRIP Sunmatch Swirl Finder light to see what it really looks like.





At the time of this project the launch of the new BLACKFIRE line was not yet public so Ed, Jerry and myself were some of the first to use this new line of products formulated specifically for Pro Detailers.

First up we cleaned the car using the BLACKFIRE Waterless Wash.





Next up, Ashley, one of the detailers at the museum and I did the baggie test and the results from feeling the paint using a simple sandwhich baggie told us the paint was contaminated and needed to be clayed.





Using the BLACKFIRE Detailing Clay and BLACKFIRE Clay Lube we clayed the paint and restored a smooth, clean surfapce perfect for the next steps.













As you can see by the brown tinge on the surface of the green clay there was some form of contaminants bonded to the paint that washing would not remove.





Visual Inspection
While the paint looked good from 15 feet away, the SCANGRIP Sunmatch Swirl Finder Light tells a different story...













BLACKFIRE Compound
The next step will be to do some testing with the new BLACKFIRE Compound. For this I'm going to start with a Lake Country Force Hybrid "Polishing" pad on the FLEX 3401.






Here's the results...
With the power from the gear-driven orbital polisher and the abrasive technology in the new BF Compound we were easily ablle to remove the swirls and scratches.








Here's Ed having some fun as we work around the car. Jerry is in the back working on the deck lid and spoiler.









BLACKFIRE Polish
After the compounding step we followed with the new BLACKFIRE Polish with soft foam polishing pads on the FLEX XFE 7 aka the Finisher.






Here's Ed starting on the roof...





Jerry's out in front working on the hood. When not taking pictures I actually did a little work too...





Machine Waxinig
After polishing we machine applied BLACKFIRE Black Ice Paste Wax











Final results...
























From left to right...

Jerry Frye, Mike Phillips and Ed Dedick





Here's everything we used to restore a finish worthy of this classic muscle car and the new owner!




More information about this event...

Veterans Day Car Giveaway


Thank you for reading, comments, questions and feedback always welcome.

Remember to thank all our members of the military this Veteran's Day!


And thank you to Mark and his team at the American Muscle Car Museum for asking Autogeek to be a part of this wonderful event.