1980 Porsche 928 paint restoration, Synergy wax review

[Eric@CherryOnTop]

Hi all, I was contacted last fall by this gentleman about restoring the paint on his Porsche. When I initially inspected the car there was a lot of damage around the drip edge around the rear hatch glass. He said he planned on having that body work done at so e point. I told him he was better off having the body work done, then bringing the car to me for the finishing detail. So he has the body work done at the beginning of spring, and wanted to wait 60 days for the paint to fully cure.

I initially thought this car was single stage metallic paint, but once I got it washed and decontaminated I started to question my initial assessment. Here's an overall before photo:



And a close up of what I'm dealing with:





This paint was in REALLY rough shape. After doing a rub test on one panel I realized it was in fact clear coated.


Products used:

- ONR at rinseless wash ratio, and clay lube ratio
- Meg's d101 at 1:4 ratio
- Sonax FE wheel cleaner
- iron X (for wheels)
- Carpro hydro2 (wheel sealant)
- claybar
- nanoskin medium prep towel

- Rupes 15
- Meguiars 205, b&s mf finishing pad
- menzerna sf4500, lc black flat pad

- Flex pe14
- lc purple foam wool pad (3.5"), menzerna fg400
- lc smartwool pad, Meguiars m101

- Flex 3401
- menzerna fg400, orange hybrid pad
- menzerna sf4000, white hybrid pad

- Poorboys trim restorer
- DP coating prep polish
- PBL Diamond surface coating
- PBL synergy

One of the customers concerns was the fading bumpers on this car. From the pictures and from feeling them I couldn't really tell what they were.



Last season when I was evaluating the car I rubbed some Poorboys trim restorer on a spot to see what would happen and the spot seemed to clear up and get glossy again, so the plan was for a few coats of this spread apart and then the customer would maintain applications as needed.

I started by bringing the car outside to scrub the bumpers and deep clean / decontaminate the wheels. I used apc and a soft brush to clean up the grime on the bumpers. I also cleaned up the gas cap area. The tires and wheel wells also got the apc treatment. Wheels were cleaned with full effect:



And then iron-x:



Finally sprayed with hydro to seal:




I brought the car in the garage and gave the paint and glass a quick rinseless wash. I then started the decontamination process. After spending about 2 minutes claying a small part of the hood and getting this:



I decided I needed to step up to a medium nanoskin towel so I didn't become eligible for Medicare during the decontamination process. By the way, to save a little time while working this way, rinseless wash the whole car but don't dry anything, then take ONR diluted to clay bar lube ratio and spray it on the wet panel and go to town. Wipe most of the solution off, if you are going to be polishing anyway, no need to go nuts getting all the streaks buffed out at this stage.

Now for the fun part, polishing. Trim was taped off:



And here's what I'm up against, some really hammered paint:



This is the re sprayed area, body shop left their pretty signature for me to remove:



Roof was trashed, more on that later:



Door:





I did my test spot on the hood. Since it's a Porsche and a old one at that, I started very light with sf4500 on a black pad on the 3401, speed 6 with the smack technique (all work done with the 3401 was with the smack technique). This removed surprisingly most of the swirls, but just wasn't going to be good enough for what I was trying to achieve, especially on the hood (gloss panels should always get a little bit more love). I had just gotten a new Rupes and wanted to see what it could do so I loaded it with a microfiber finishing disc and m205. I used the Kevin brown method and got great correction and just a little hazing left over. I went back over the hazing with the sf4500 to clean it up. Both edges of the hood were really bad:



I used fg400 on a foamed wool pad on a rotary to clean these up:



I should mention at this point that I kept my paint thickness gauge very close to hand for the polishing on this car. What I discovered during pre polish inspection was that this car was actually in various stages of repaint. I got very low readings on the hoof and roof, as low as 77 microns. The freshly painted hatch area measured in the 130 micron range, along with most of the left side of the car. The right side of the car appears to have been repainted at some point too, with those readings being consistent in the 300-400 micron range.

This doesn't seem like too much of a big deal until I moved away from the hood where I had a process dialed in and that process did absolutely nothing on the next section.


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[Eric@CherryOnTop]

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[Eric@CherryOnTop]

I ended up needing 4 different polishing processes for this car to get consistent results. While the hood was on the soft side, the fenders and doors required something more. Fg400 on an orange hybrid pad at speed 3 (smack technique) gave me the level of correction I was looking for with the occasional area requiring a second round of polishing to remove deeper defects.









Here's the right side fender under lights, holograms left over probably from body work don't at unknown point in time:



Cleaned up:




Now for the roof. Since I had been doing so well with the fg400 on the doors and fenders I thought I finally had a handle on this car. Not so much.

Here's the roof:



And after one round of the fg400 process:



Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not a single bit of correction out of this process. I actually yelled at the car at this point. So I grabbed the rotary, the wool pad and the heaviest stuff I own, m101 (which, according to the label can actually be used on a wool pad, despite it being a foam cut compound). I used the 10 at 10 technique here and worked the product until it started to haze, gave it a spritz of distilled water and worked it some more. VERY glad to have a paint thickness gauge at this point. Some spots required 2 sets of passes with this process and I still didn't get everything out, but the PTG said I could go no further.

This is what I was left with:



From this:



To this:



This:



To this:



Don't mind this holograms, they were polished out in the second round. The whole roof got sf4000 on a white pad with the 3401.

The re sprayed hatch did not have many swirl marks, just body shop holograms. It was polished in one step with sf4000, white pad, 3401.


So that completed the polishing stage. I brought the car outside and washed it with Poorboys super slick and suds to remove oils and dust. Dried with leaf blower and waffle weave mf towel.

I used Diamond surface coating on the roof of the car, only because it will not be able to be polished again and I wanted the best protection I had available for it. I hand waxed the car with Synergy next. Applied to the whole car, then went back to the starting point to remove.

Here it is curing on the hood:



And wiped off:



Cont...

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[sproketser]

Wow , that will be a tough job on the Porsche !

[Eric@CherryOnTop]

Finally some all done shots:






























Overall I think the car came out as good as it could have given its before condition. Thanks for looking.


Thoughts on Synergy...

Normally I would make this a separate review with pretty pictures and whatnot but I had to leave work early Friday to finish this car before catching an emergency flight to Florida for family business Saturday.

I had been saving my synergy review for this car thinking it was single stage metallic and we haven't seen it used on this type of paint before. But this is clear coated and will have to do.

Synergy arrives packaged as you would expect a high end wax from an AG brand to arrive, in a nice box, in a velvety bag with an applicator included. The metal tin has a screw on lid, but no air seal. The wax is a butterscotch color and I can't quite place the smell, but it is pleasant though a bit solvent-y. It is a hard wax.

The wax loads up on the applicator with a couple of quick swipes and spreads very thin and far on the paint. Reloading only requires a quick quarter turn of the applicator. A whole jar will probably last an enthusiast the rest of their life, I hardly used any at all for this car.

After waiting the recommended 10 minutes of cure time, the swipe test indicates the wax is ready for removal, and removes super easy with a plush microfiber towel. The surface left behind is clear, glossy and slick to the touch. I had actually waxed the hood earlier in the week with the intention of applying a second coat after all the polishing was done. So when I was washing the car to remove polishing dust, I was able to see that this wax beads and sheets water off the paintwork excellent. What was left was blown off with ease requiring almost no towel drying.

I don't know that a second coat is beneficial, I didn't observe any difference between the hood which received 2 coats and the fenders which received one. I also don't know whether it made any difference on the roof, which was coated with PBL surface coating the night before the synergy was used as a topper over it.

Overall, I think this wax is for a very niche market, the die hard PBL fan who needs to have every product. At $195 for a jar I don't see it having any place in the for profit detailing world. This is purely an enthusiasts wax.


Thanks for viewing my write up and review, all questions and comments are welcome.


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[sproketser]

Wow , did a great job ! How bout the rear bumper mate ! Will the owner have it repainted ! Or you got it done .

[surajprasade]

Nice swirl free finish, great pictures with informative write up.

[Mike@DedicatedPerfection]

What an amazing transformation on that Porsche Eric! Beautiful documentation and pictures to support the write up. Everything about this is top notch!

I can't believe the amount of correction you were achieving using the Smack technique with such minimal aggressive products such as SF4500 and the black Hybrid. Blows my mind. On the other hand you had to go in the opposite direction on the roof to get it to correct.

Great to hear your thoughts on Synergy as well.

I may have asked in the past but what camera gear are you using? Beautiful pictures BTW.

[Tato]

What a work Eric, very competent on this restoration.

Thanks for sharing,

Kind Regards.

[Eric@CherryOnTop]

Thank you everyone for the feedback.

Sproketser, both bumpers are pretty much done-zo. I asked about them on the forum a few days ago and the consensus was that this type of fading was commonplace for polyurethane bumpers of this era. The trim restorer brought back some shine and made them glossy again and the owner can keep up with these treatments if he wants to avoid a respray for now.

Mike, the variance in hardness of the painted surfaces was ridiculous. This is one of the most challenging jobs I have done. I far exceeded the time estimate I gave the customer (hours wise, I had the car all week while he was away on business), so I will end up eating the cost of my extra labor. I had 4 different processes which I had to test on each individual panel just in case I was dealing with softer paint again. But your technique is really the bees knees with the Flex and it's why I put the new Rupes aside for this one, she had to watch jealously as I put the Flex back to work.

I'm using a Nikon D40x with a 35mm f/1.8 lens.


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