Arizona Detail - 85' Mustang Fox Body - Original Paint Restored & CQuartz Finest

[Wills.WindowsAndWheels]

To start this off, I just want to say this a fairly lengthy and picture heavy post. The owner had asked if we would do a write up on his since he has followed our write ups for quite #a while now on other cars we have done....so I really wanted to go all out and tell the story behind the detail with this one. I hope you enjoy it...and if not well...at least enjoy the eye candy.



A beautiful and extremely well kept 1985 Mustang...with only 20,000 miles and original paint was one of our featured jobs in late August. While the Arizona weather was a BIT cooler (low 100's), humidity was up #and that sun was still glaring down on us!







The owner of this car had communicated with us for...about a year(?) through MeguiarsOnline.com. Having seen many of our posts of other cars we had done, we spoke quite a bit about possibly doing his Mach 1...but things never worked out. Turned out, he sold it! Then had this beautiful Fox Body shipped in from out of state and asked if we'd come take a look at it (which we gladly accepted).



Upon initial inspection, the car was INSANELY clean. Very well kept by anyones standards. That being said, once we put a light on the paint...the swirls jumped right out at us!







The paint indeed needed love. The owner informed us that the car had original paint on it, with the exception of the hood and lower panels (which were repainted). Dani however, being the little paint detective that she is, was taking measurements and suddenly spoke up and said "Your quarter panel has been repainted."

The owner looked a bit surprised!. Then he started taking a closer look...and noticed the orange peel was slightly different....then Dani showed him how much thicker the paint was reading on that panel (over 4 mils) where as the rest of the car was much thinner (approx. 2 mils).

The owner informed us a day or so later that he spoke to his dad and sure enough, his dad had that panel repainted because he had accidentally scratched it when lowering it down from a lift (oops!). Apparently they got a good laugh out of it though.



Back to the Mustang. As noted, it was pretty swirled up...even super clean cars can be very swirled...













Out of the entire car, it was probably the trunk and spoiler that were the worst. Lots of swirls (as seen above) and also, just due to its age, there was a noticeable "pitted" look. Having an 86' Town Car myself (this mustangs cousin), i was familiar with these little spots and the fact they were due to just old age.



Nevertheless, that wouldn't stop us from turning this car into the show piece it deserved to be! But lets take one more look at the damage we'd be dealing with:











Ok so #you get the idea...it was swirled (obviously or else i wouldn't be doing this write-up!)



Prep was pretty easy....a rinseless wash followed by a decontamination











And then well....the taping...







You see this old baby had a LOTTTT of plastic trim...and this plastic trim had been taken care of (not a bit of fading!)...so we wanted to keep it that way. This resulted in poor Dani having to use about 50 yards of tape! #You can see her part way through this fun task here.



Also, the sun roof completely came out (which was great), but since we wanted to be sure the inside stayed clean while we were working, it was taped off with plastic to insure none of our polishing and compound dust ended up on the interior.









While Dani was doing that, i started working on the test spot. We were unsure going into this just how much correction we could get. The paint was original and a bit thin in areas...so we wanted to #be sure that preserving the paint as much as possible was priority one. I opted to go with a medium polishing step first to see how much correction we would get, the results were GREAT. Easily 95+% of defects were removed, very little paint was taken off and the amount of marring left was minimal as well.



A finishing polish step left the paint crystal clear and super glossy...



I tested the roof first since it was pretty badly swirled and the paint was original





After two polishing steps...there was a huge transformation...









And thanks to the sunroof being removable, polishing right up to the edge around it was very easy









Want to see how thorough a detail was? Check the edges! Most detailers can pretty easily get good results on #nice big flat areas....but panel edges...tight areas, or curved areas....well, a 3" wide rocker can easily take as much, if not more time to polish than it takes to do an entire hood. But thats why this is called "DETAILing"!



After insuring that our process was going to work on the original paint, we then wanted to make sure it would work on the repainted areas as well. Soooo, another test spot was called for. I just stuck with the same combo as we used before...and sometimes you just get lucky, because it worked just as well on the repainted quarter panel.



A 50/50 shot below will show the results we were able to achieve..













Oh yes, THATS what we were looking for!







Bam! Thats some red paint!



Now knowing our combo was working on both types of paints...we were ready to being our first "cutting" step...so up to the hood i went. Of course, once you think you have it all figured out, theres usually a curveball that gets thrown - and in this case that curve ball was LOTS of deeper scratches on the hood#that i wasn't able to pick out through all the swirls! After doing one section on the hood, i could tell it needed a bit more "bite", so i added some M100 Meguiars compound to my pad...and it knocked those RIDS out with no problem.



Onward!



As always, several light sources were used to inspect the paint. For vertical panels, our large LED light worked well to see the damage...





It also worked well to see the after effects of our polishing...







Poor Dani was STILL taping, but finally found an end to her tape roll (literally!) She snapped a couple pictures of her finished work while i was hand polishing the underneath side of the door handles...




As you can see, my pad was blood red. A tell tale sign that you are working with single stage paint. Cleaning the pad after EVERY section was extremely important...we turned several microfiber towels into pure red just from cleaning our pads constantly.

We also turned a few red from hand polishing areas we had to do...and there were quite a few on this baby. The underside of the door handle as noted above...also there was about a 1/2" lip of paint at about a 45 degree angle right above the plastic trim along the sides...this piece was too thin to get a polisher onto properly and thus had to be done by hand as well. The pillars along side of the windshield, well...same thing.



Before





Microfiber towel and some elbow grease and finesse all crammed into one...







End result...







Still a light bit of marring to clean up...but the heavy swirls were gone.







Side note...halfway through the first day, I texted the owner a few pictures to show him how we were coming along and also posted pictures to our facebook business page (which he too was following). He texted me back saying how excited he was about how everything was turning out - and then he said "My phone has been blowing up all day with messages from my friends saying 'I can't believe you're actually letting someone else touch your car!' They also said they were shocked to see how bad it was to begin with!"

The kind of feeling you get knowing that you are being trusted to run a MACHINE over someones car...when he wouldn't even trust anyone else to even touch it...is a truly indescribable one. Back to the story!





Another before shot of the fender...









And then after. You will notice something here...theres a bit more micromarring left over from the first polishing step. Why? Well..the only thing i changed was...i took a 15 minute break to get some food and a little water...and it seemed that taking that break allowed for some of the dried up paint and polish residue on my pad to harden...and though i cleaned my pad thoroughly several times, there was still a light bit of additional micro-marring.

The good news...it was still so minute that our second polishing pass cleaned it right up...so no worries!









Dani was finally able to get a polisher in her hands once she finished the last little bit of prep...you can see she also taped and covered the plastic vented area on the scoop of the hood to make sure it stayed pristine.









Now polish that paint!











This detail looked like a crime scene...you can see my towels here are covered in red! Dani caught me cleaning my pad before attacking the trunk and spoiler. This was sure fun being pinned up against the metal garage door in the middle of the afternoon!











The spoiler i was able to use a larger pad to correct the paint, the small part of the trunk however, was all done with 4" pads...as was the small strip of paint going up along the rear glass.



And speaking of 4" pads...Dani had her work cut out for her on the front bumper. LOTS of very intricate areas, but every little spot was properly taken care of.









Like i said...every little spot...







The cutting process was done by the end of day one with the exception of a couple of small areas on the rear bumper. When day two arrived Dani took care of those areas while i started doing the final polishing step on the rest of the car.











Oh yes, this paint was RED!

[Wills.WindowsAndWheels]

Once Dani finished up the small areas she jumped in to help me finish the final polishing. Once that was complete, it was time to strip away any left over polishing oils and get everything prepped for CQuartz Finest paint coating.













Dani in the mean time was playing with the damn tape again! On the car...off the car, she couldn't make her mind up!







After she was done messing around with that...she began cleaning the tires and rims, dressing the tires and doing an Eraser wipe down on the rims so that she could coat them with CQuartz Finest as well.











Having smaller hands can sometimes be a blessing. They came in VERY handy later that week when we worked on a 58' GMC Pick-Up with original paint...LOTS of tight areas and hand rubbing...but that write up will come later on. Back to the Pony!







It was time...time to apply that gloss sauce that we have come to really love. Hardcore protection, years of durability and a depth and shine that is unmatched. Lay it on thick!







Here i had applied it to the far half of the hood. Keen eyes may be able to see the depth difference...unfortunately I'm not #a professional photographer and with red being a very difficult color to capture on camera, i wasn't able to get a picture to do it justice. In person however, it was very easy to see where coated paint stopped and bare paint began.





I tackled the top panels while Dani wrapped up with the wheels by applying Finest to them...man those babies look good!









Once the wheels were completed, she jumped in to help me finish coating the paint.











After 2 coats were applied, windows were then cleaned, door jambs cleaned and a double check was done on everything...then finally it was time to pull this red beauty out into the sun...where it could truly shine.









Let the beauty shots begin...







Huge difference here...notice even the very sharp angle where the scoop comes down into the flat part of the hood is even swirl free....tricky area to polish i'll tell ya that!









While the trunk still had that pitted look, it was still a far cry better from how it looked when we first got our hands on it.









Of course small areas were polished to a beautiful clear gloss as well











One little, two little, three little sun shines.....



















We want the gloss....gotta have that gloss ohhhh we want the gloss...





























Now even though we didn't touch the engine, other than to clean the jambs...it still deserves to be shown off...trust me this baby sounded (and smelled!) as sweet as it looked.







This last picture, i think, completely sums everything up









I've said before that when an owner brings you a NEW car and wants you to make it better, its a huge amount of pressure. Well, when an owner brings #you a nearly 30 year old car that LOOKS new and has received the utmost pampering and asks you to make it better...that too is a huge amount of pressure.

That weight was lifted off our shoulders when the owner walked up and his first word was "Wow". Whew! His second sentence was one we hear from almost every owner after we finish a job....."It looks so good that i dont even want to drive it!" Nothing beats that feeling.



I hope you all enjoyed this write up....I really wanted to give this car and the write up the attention it deserved and I hope i did them both justice!

Thank you all.

[allenk4]

Great Teamwork!

[dad07]

Will and Dani = The Dynamic Duo!

Great turn around.....very entertaining write up.

Awesome work guys!



Will, tell Dani to quit playing with the tape........that stuff isn't cheap.....LOL!

[Sicoupe]

Like always, outstanding work to both of you

[jamesboyy]

A all original classic eye candy begin perfected, and protected by one of the greatest teams.....keep up the astonishing work

[Sizzle Chest]

Great write up! Thanks for posting! Love those 4 eyed fox's! Great work! Car came out awesome!

[AZ Mike]

Beautiful job. I love your write ups.

[Klasse Act]

Great turn around on original paint but did you ever find out how old the paint was on the hood? Also, I like your little jingle about the gloss, P-Funk (I'm from the D and picked up on that right away!)

I'm sure the owner was stunned!!!

[FUNX650]

•had this beautiful Fox Body shipped in from out of state and asked if we'd come take a look at it (which we gladly accepted).

•there was a huge transformation

•Bam! Thats some red paint!

Hi Wills & Dani...

•Another most excellent Detail:
-by a most excellent Detail Team!
•Great write-up and pictorial too!

•Only thing left for me to say is:
-This red-hue Fox was transformed into such a Foxy Lady!!

[ame="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zYIqmBD6PHk"]✘ FOXY LADY ✘ Jimi Hendrix - YouTube[/video]

Bob