Holy Soft Paint, Batman! - Porsche 993 - Paint Correction - Attention to Detailing Peoria, IL
Let me start off by saying that we are not new to the idea of soft, jet black paint. We welcome the challenge of perfecting jet black finishes in an attempt to pursue new levels of gloss and clarity..... and this vehicle was no different. At least that is what we thought before we began.........
This 1995 Porsche 993 was brought to me to restore some life into the aged paintwork. Upon initial inspection, it was clear that the finish had seen some use and abuse... swirls, oxidation, deep scratches, rock chips (TONS OF ROCK CHIPS), sanding marks, die back, etc. Basically, think of a common paint defect, and this car had it. With the age of the vehicle in mind, and a bunch of paint thickness readings taken, our mood changed a bit from "full restoration" mode to "let's not push it" mode. Some areas had been repainted (>200 microns), some areas were original (<90 microns), some areas had spot repairs (exceeding the range of my gauge due to filler).
I began by testing a very mild combination of Meguiar's M205 on an Orange Light Cutting Pad on the passenger door, which as you can see was lacking a little bit in terms of clarity and gloss.
I was pretty surprised at the result given the fact that we had just done a jet black X5 a few days prior with this same combination to remove just light swirls. This was the first indication that this paint was exceptionally soft.
I proceeded to try this same combo on the hood to validate my results. The hood was also quite faded and has been beaten nearly to death by rock chips and other flying debris.
M205 + Orange pad yielded a nice improvement here as well.
I worked my way around to the hips of the vehicle. Someone had clearly not been kind do these as the defects were MUCH deeper here.
I tested the M205/orange combo, and the results were good, but not outstanding. I grabbed some D300 and a MF cutting pad to up the correction a bit, this was then followed with M205/orange as the compound left an incredibly hazy finish. In the end, the finish wasn't perfect, but a massive improvement nevertheless. Again, preserving the paint became a higher priority than perfecting the paint on this job.
The rear wing was not standard for this version of the 993, and was painted by a body shop prior to installation. The finish left by the shop was a bit lack luster.
After D300/MF + M205/Orange it was looking much better (we will be doing a 3rd step later to completely refine all of these areas)
Parked and tucked in for the night...
We ended up doing a 3 step correction on the majority of the vehicle... D300/MF, M205/Orange, and finally Essence/Rupes Yellow to maximize the defect removal and most importantly the clarity in the finish. The car was then protected with GTechniq C2 V3. The results were stunning! Incredible dark, deep, and clear paint.
I had a good friend of mine get some photos afterwards... this rolling shot is my favorite!!
Re: Holy Soft Paint, Batman! - Porsche 993 - Paint Correction - Attention to Detailing Peoria, IL
Beautiful....
Paint preservation over perfection> Seems like you got pretty darn close to perfection. Mebbe 12" from surface not perfect, but looks GREAT in the pics.
Re: Holy Soft Paint, Batman! - Porsche 993 - Paint Correction - Attention to Detailing Peoria, IL
The paint on the 993s is horrid. Every one I've seen come into the VW/Audi/Porsche dealership that i run the body shop at have all the same problems that you experienced. In fact I have a 96 Turbo in the shop right now that we finished up some rust work around the windshield and back glass and now have to compound and polish the all the original paint. I've done a couple test spots and it definitely turned out to be "damage control" do the best we can while taking off the absolute least amount of material.
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