Black Mazda paint correction

**tuscarora dave** · 03-11-2012, 05:04 PM

Hello everyone. This car was brought to me by a local car repair establishment for some extreme scratch removal. This car is a high mileage car that was in pretty rough shape aesthetically but in really good mechanical shape. My customer bought it to repair and sell. This car will be going to the 16 year old daughter of one of my customer's friends. I was told that the car was taken through an automatic car wash and something went haywire with the wash and it put some pretty deep and long scratches up the driver's side door, front fender and over part of the hood. The rest of the car was fairly scratched up and full of swirls and oxidation. Here's the car and a few photos of the worst scratched up areas.

I gave the car a citrus degreaser pre soak and washed with some car wash concentrate that I found at a thrift store. Then it was clayed with some purple medium grade clay using ONR for clay lube. I mix my ONR clay lube a bit heavy on the ONR.

I was originally going to try to do this job using a finishing pad on a rotary and D-300 but the worst areas ended up being compounded with wool and rubbing compound.

I did play around with the D-300 just for kicks and here are the results of that test section.

Actually that's really not that bad for 4 slow section passes. I did a few more passes on that area and used wool and Mothers Rubbing compound on the driver's side front fender and the entire hood. The hood was peppered with stone chips. Too bad because the car now looks pretty awesome otherwise.

Since my customer was flipping this car we settled on a price and I had at it, concentrating on correcting the heavy scratches and then doing something quicker for the rest of the car. Here are a few photos of how the fender turned out after the wool and Mothers followed by the D-300 with a finishing pad on the Flex 3401.

The rest of the car was done with D-300 and 2 slow section passes with a 5.5" VC finishing pad on the Flex 3401 and then rewashed, dried and topped with a coat of Banana Gloss to give the best appearance. I volunteered a few extra hours over what we agreed to because he throws me a lot of work and black IMO needs a little extra care. Here are the finished photos.

Back at the owner's place.

Too bad about the chips in the hood.

Thanks for looking

**bigez** · 03-11-2012, 05:17 PM

Turned out great! My dad has a Mazda just like this (minus the wing). And it also has rock chips in the exact same places...(a lot of highway miles).

**SwerrledUp** · 03-11-2012, 05:43 PM

That turned out awesome.

I detail mainly daily drivers and those stone chips are such a pain. That take away from an otherwise great final product.

Hopefully that 16 year notices that her car shines. Props on the job.

**tuscarora dave** · 03-11-2012, 05:49 PM

Originally Posted by bigez

Turned out great! My dad has a Mazda just like this (minus the wing). And it also has rock chips in the exact same places...(a lot of highway miles).

Thanks, I really like that car.

Originally Posted by SwerrledUp

That turned out awesome.

Thanks

I detail mainly daily drivers and those stone chips are such a pain. That take away from an otherwise great final product.

that may be another job for me down the road a piece.

Hopefully that 16 year notices that her car shines. Props on the job.

My guess is that it will be in a tunnel wash getting all swirled up before the beginning of next month.

**tuscarora dave** · 03-11-2012, 07:57 PM

While I was working on this car yesterday, this nice man pulls in to the parking lot driving a mini van. I initially thought he was a customer of the property owner who buys and sells access mobility vans and buses. He gets out of the van and said "Man!!! I need sun glasses!!! That thing is shiny!!!" He then went on to tell me how he saw the gloss as he was coming across the highway overpass and had to stop to see what kind of wax I had put on it. Here's the overpass.

He was surprised when I told him there was no wax on it and that I was still working on just polishing the paint. He asked many questions and I got pretty deep with him about the actual work that's involved in correcting paint. We talked for about an hour and then he left with a small stack of my cards and a free bottle of my tire shine. He has a Cadillac Allante that he's going to be bringing in to have polished up after it gets a dent repaired.

As I was leaving the lot to deliver the car back to the client this fellow just happened to be driving down the road again and we talked again while he looked at the finished job. He was like, "Damn, you are the man!!" Then he ran his fingers across the finish. I was like

I was just glad that he got to see the end result of my work. He said he had already handed 2 of my cards to some friends of his.

What a great location. I need to get some signs on that building for sure.