Rob Tomlin
Lotus Exige S
My friend recently picked up a '66 Chevy II Nova SS. I've actually lost track of how many of these cars he has owned since high school, but it's quite a few!
The prior owner, who is also a friend, had owned the car for a long time (10 years?), but he never buffed the car out. It appeared to be a lacquer paint job, and it was in very rough/bad shape. Lots of debris, scratches, etching, swirls and some oxidation.
Given how bad the paint was, we decided that we were going to need to wet sand the car. I did try compounding one area before doing so, and it was very obvious the car needed to be wet sanded. We started with 2000, but it wasn't aggressive enough to get everything out of the paint, so we wound up using 1200 (1500 wasn't enough either).
Since the paint was in such bad shape, we had nothing to lose, since it was really in need of a new paint job.
The first few pics are pretty self explanatory and show what we were dealing with, which is a lot of scratches, swirls, stains etc:
This is the trunk. Pretty ugly. And no, this is not after wet sanding!
The hood isn't any bettter than the trunk. Yes, someone put a can of soda on the hood and let it etch the paint:
The door shows stains, and a lack of shine and reflection:
Roof shot. Lots of deep scratches, pitting, etc:
The prior owner, who is also a friend, had owned the car for a long time (10 years?), but he never buffed the car out. It appeared to be a lacquer paint job, and it was in very rough/bad shape. Lots of debris, scratches, etching, swirls and some oxidation.
Given how bad the paint was, we decided that we were going to need to wet sand the car. I did try compounding one area before doing so, and it was very obvious the car needed to be wet sanded. We started with 2000, but it wasn't aggressive enough to get everything out of the paint, so we wound up using 1200 (1500 wasn't enough either).
Since the paint was in such bad shape, we had nothing to lose, since it was really in need of a new paint job.
The first few pics are pretty self explanatory and show what we were dealing with, which is a lot of scratches, swirls, stains etc:
This is the trunk. Pretty ugly. And no, this is not after wet sanding!
The hood isn't any bettter than the trunk. Yes, someone put a can of soda on the hood and let it etch the paint:
The door shows stains, and a lack of shine and reflection:
Roof shot. Lots of deep scratches, pitting, etc:
