1947 Packard Clipper: Heavy Orange Peel Removal-Pic Heavy

[richy]

When I learned that I would be working on this car, I was very excited at the prospect. I had been told that it was repainted and that it had some heavy orange peel that needed removing. The reason that the owner wanted it removed was that it was going to be sold in an auction. Therefore, he did not want me spending an inordinate amount of time correcting the orange peel. The goal was therefore as much OP removal as possible for the least amount of time trying to make the paint look much better.

The immediate answer that sprung to mind was Corey's CarPro Denim Orange Peel Removal pads. I called Corey and discussed the job with him. We discussed how to use them and how many I'd need. I ordered 5. Fast forward to 3 days prior to the job: still no pads in the mail!! Uuggghhh! Panic mode. I then turned to my life-saving friend Bryan Walroth from Toronto. I had also talked to Bryan about how to use the pads and I know he was one of the very first to use them. Luckily Bryan had 5 brand new ones in stock for Concours Touch and sent them overnight delivery to me.

My intention and indeed my hope was that this would essentially be a 2 step and no more than 3 step to level the Orange Peel (OP) and coat it. Incidentally, I decided this car would be the very worthy first candidate for the DG coating.

I had done 2 cars for this owner several years ago and wanted to really do a bang up job for him on this one. Here are the last 2 Antiques that I did for him:

'53 Chrylser- Bar set high!

'42 Caddy-Finally Done (and with DG)

When I saw the car, I knew this was going to be an extremely difficult challenge for an OP removal pad. Boy, oh boy was it heavy! It was truthfully, an awful paint job. I realized my job was going to be making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Bloody shame too, as it is such a very cool car! Not only is this car cool because it's old and in great shape, no, wait to you hear what he did to it! He wanted to make this car into a daily driver so he installed air conditioning into it and changed the electrical system to 12 volt. A very cool, very unique car with all the comforts. Awesome or what?!?

So, here she is when she arrived. I tried to capture the OP as well as I could and also show the overall dullness of the paint:











Outside view of some of the OP:








Chrome discoloured by the exhaust:











Man, what a gorgeous interior!!










The first step was a hand wash with DG 901. That was followed by a hand wash with IronX paste on an Incredisponge to make sure no wax or contamination was on the surface.

So, one of the most noticeable areas of course was the hood. As a friend of mine commented who came by to check it out "The hood of this thing is longer than most cars nowadays". True. So that's a whole lotta OP to show. Here's how the hood looked inside:





Now the moment of truth: testing the OP removal pads on this paint. I knew it was going to be tough, I just had no idea how truly tough this challenge was going to be. Bryan had suggested I use my rotary for the pads. The Flex was not going to be near strong enough for what I needed to do here. He also suggested that I used HD Cut which I had purchased from him a month or so back. (He's a Canadian HD distributor-no link provided here per forum rules). So, I did. Tried it at varying speeds. Not enough cut. I then went to Amerirocks. Better, still not enough. I then stepped it all the way up to M101. The pads behave differently with it than with the other 2 but it did give me somewhat more cut. Not a ton more by any means. Even 2 very heavy handed, slow passes only removed a mild to moderate amount of OP. I decided to follow that stage with my 3000 grit Megs pad on my Griot's mini DA. Of course, that dulled the surface, but once polished out, yielded better OP leveling than the Denim pads would on their own. In hindsight, I would have been better served with a 2 step sanding followed by compounding and polishing. But, remember the goal of minimizing the cost. That would have taken even more time than I already had estimated taking. All the areas of OP that I could safely get to were given 2 rounds of Denim pad therapy. That improved it. Did it eliminate the OP altogether? No. My goal, and I think I succeeded, was to vastly improve the finish within a reasonable amount of time for this big beast. I'll let you be the judge afterward whether I succeeded or not.


Here is that same hood section all polished out:





Here is an in-progress shot after having been sanded:





The steps following the sanding stage were:
Amerirocks with TB black wool + rotary
M105 + orange B/S + Flex
M205 + white B/S + Flex
DG Squeaky Clean via Flex + green B/S
Eraser Wipe down
DG coating


The chrome on this car was an absolute treat. Very good quality and fun to work with. I used an orange B/S pad + CarPro Reflect on it followed by DG SC and then DG Coating. The chrome strips along the side of the body and also along the bottom were cleaned with DG SC and then coated also with DG Coating. The chrome hubcaps were polished with the last 2 stages listed above and then coated.


Here are a few shots of me checking the progress in the sun. You can see the LR 1/4 panel was only at the sanding stage at that point:














You can see that exhaust stain was removed:

[richy]

The whole roof was not done in order to save time. It was given a 2 step of orange B/S + M105 followed by white B/S + M205 in the middle section. The edges and surrounding visible areas were all given the full treatment. After coating all the paint and chrome, I vacuumed the interior and polished the wood with DG Aquawax. The glass was cleaned with the KD cloth. This was the first time I was disappointed in the KD cloth. One very easy extra step that made all the difference in the world was to wipe down the glass several time with the KD and then dry it with a glass waffle weave mf. That extra step cut whatever residue was stubbornly clinging to the surface of the glass. The windshield and rear window were treated to CarPro Fly By 30. The side glass coated with DG. The tires shot with OB via my mini airgun. As a last step, the paint and chrome were done with ReLoad the following day. Now it was ready for its debut. Here are some inside shots:












Here's 3 different views of the side showing the decreased level of OP now visible:











Love the hood ornament!























With this paint job, it wasn't just the OP that I was dealing with either. There were many instances of dirt in the paint. Here's a few shots that illustrate that:








Another shot of the hood ornament:






Lastly, I finally got to shoot it outside after 3 solid days of rain!








Less OP than before, but unfortunately, not all gone.



































In the end, what you see is the result of 23 hours of labour. It's not perfect by any means, but I do think I made a dramatic difference to the appearance of the paint. I hope it sells for him for a good price. It's a very cool, very practical car that will make someone a unique and amazing daily driver. Thanks for looking.

[jamesboyy]

A pure classic indeed and yes it may still have orange peel but at least you know there is enough skin to work with still if you needed to, excellent work as always

[hernandez.art13]

Looks great, at first I was, what's OP? lol Orange peel right?

What did you end up sanding with?

I really like the style of those tires, not sure why.

I bet he'll sell that car in no time.

[davey g-force]

Great work!

It would have been nice to see how far you could take it if you were permitted more time.

[Eric@CherryOnTop]

Keeping in mind the customers goal, I think you knocked this one out of the park, the car looks beautiful!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[BillE]

That is some good work there.

Congrats!

Like you mentioned, the interior is gorgeous!

Bill

Bill

[Evan.J]

Love it Richy! Did a 35 Packard limo and all I can say it they look amazing when they are all finished!

[HUMP DIESEL]

Keeping in mind the customers goal, I think you knocked this one out of the park, the car looks beautiful!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Completely agree, you have to do what the customer really wants, and sometimes educate them on more, but in this case, he was not keeping the car, so you did what you needed to do and it looks fantastic.

HUMP

[richy]

A pure classic indeed and yes it may still have orange peel but at least you know there is enough skin to work with still if you needed to, excellent work as always

James, thanks very much. The customer got it today and was very pleased.

Looks great, at first I was, what's OP? lol Orange peel right?

What did you end up sanding with?

I really like the style of those tires, not sure why.

I bet he'll sell that car in no time.

Art, I started the write up with the words Orange Peel and then referenced that I would be thereafter referring to it as OP by having OP in brackets after the words. Sorry for any confusion.
I ended up using 3000 grit Megs sanding discs. He may choose to keep it now that he's seen it. I guess he decided today to raise the reserve and won't care if it doesn't sell. Mission accomplished!

Great work!

It would have been nice to see how far you could take it if you were permitted more time.

True. Even still, the paint job itself could only be improved upon so much.

Keeping in mind the customers goal, I think you knocked this one out of the park, the car looks beautiful!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Thanks very much! That's the hard part when you want to strive for perfection. In this case, with the condition of the paint itself, it was easier to relax about that. It stilled pissed me off to see such a nice car with a bad paint job!

That is some good work there.

Congrats!

Like you mentioned, the interior is gorgeous!

Bill

Bill

Thanks Bill! Packards were long known for quality and it clearly shows.

Love it Richy! Did a 35 Packard limo and all I can say it they look amazing when they are all finished!

Evan, PLEASE attach a link to some shots of that! I'd love a low 30's dual cowl phaeton!!

Completely agree, you have to do what the customer really wants, and sometimes educate them on more, but in this case, he was not keeping the car, so you did what you needed to do and it looks fantastic.

HUMP

Thanks very much!