white gecko
New member
This is an extremely long writeup with a LOT of pics. Just a warning for those with slower connections. This is the most intense detail I've ever done.
I wanted a seriously challenging detail earlier this year, and I set about looking a for a car and owner who wanted to bring their car back from the brink of death. I looked at many cars, but settled on this 98 Trans Am that lived a VERY hard life. Before the current owner bought it, it sat in a field for 2-3 years with no engine or transmission in the Chico area where it's super hot. Also has been in Oklahoma and Reno, so all dry, hot and dusty places. Rodents lived in the engine bay and would climb in through the missing fender vents. Plus when it was sitting nobody really kept the car up, just was on the back burner for the owners. Current owner bought it for next to nothing as a roller and began to rebuild it.
He brought it to me with a new engine/trans/wheels along with realigning some of the gaps that were pretty bad. The doors were scraping the back and bottom edges, and drivers door cracked the paint where it met the driver fender and the clear was chipping away. Every single panel on the car had been repainted at different times and different quality (all poorly done), except the roof and spoiler. There were fisheyes everywhere, overlapping clearcoats, and runs too. The paint was so bad, decided to do a full wetsand on it, which was all done by hand. I learned a lot more about wetsanding durning the process and improved my skills at it as well. I've done some before but never this many hours.
This car is NOT perfect. There are many paint defects, chips, cracked clear etc. However, it is a shocking transformation for what it came from.
Total time invested: 91 hours
Process:
Exterior
-Foamed with Dawn
-Rinsed and Dawn wash x2
-Megs APC 4:1 on wheels/tires
-Swissvax Wheel brush
-Clayed with Z18 and Megs LT as lube
-Tires with Zaino Z16
-Glass Zaino Z12 with PC and LC orange
Wetsanding
-Meguiars Unigrit 1500
-Meguiars Unigrit 2000
-Meguiars Unigrit 2500
-Meguiars medium sanding block
Interior
-Vacuumed
-303 Carpet Cleaner
-Scrubbed with various brushes
-Leather with Megs APC 5:1
-Lexol Leather Conditioner
-Stoner's Invisible Glass on windows
-vents and console cleaned with various brushes/qtips
-Interior panels cleaned with Megs APC 5:1
Correction
-Menzerna Power Gloss on Meguiars W4 wool
-Meguiars 105 on Meguiars yellow SOLO wool
-Menzerna SIP on LC yellow
-Menzerna SIP on LC orange
-Menzerna 106FA on LC white
-Menzerna PO85RD on LC red
LSP
-Swissvax Cleaner Fluid
-Swissvax Concorso by hand
When current owner picked it up
Condition of the car when it arrived to me
Graphic images of swirls....
This is where the rodents would climb in and out of the engine bay. This actually cleaned up very well.
I wanted a seriously challenging detail earlier this year, and I set about looking a for a car and owner who wanted to bring their car back from the brink of death. I looked at many cars, but settled on this 98 Trans Am that lived a VERY hard life. Before the current owner bought it, it sat in a field for 2-3 years with no engine or transmission in the Chico area where it's super hot. Also has been in Oklahoma and Reno, so all dry, hot and dusty places. Rodents lived in the engine bay and would climb in through the missing fender vents. Plus when it was sitting nobody really kept the car up, just was on the back burner for the owners. Current owner bought it for next to nothing as a roller and began to rebuild it.
He brought it to me with a new engine/trans/wheels along with realigning some of the gaps that were pretty bad. The doors were scraping the back and bottom edges, and drivers door cracked the paint where it met the driver fender and the clear was chipping away. Every single panel on the car had been repainted at different times and different quality (all poorly done), except the roof and spoiler. There were fisheyes everywhere, overlapping clearcoats, and runs too. The paint was so bad, decided to do a full wetsand on it, which was all done by hand. I learned a lot more about wetsanding durning the process and improved my skills at it as well. I've done some before but never this many hours.
This car is NOT perfect. There are many paint defects, chips, cracked clear etc. However, it is a shocking transformation for what it came from.
Total time invested: 91 hours
Process:
Exterior
-Foamed with Dawn
-Rinsed and Dawn wash x2
-Megs APC 4:1 on wheels/tires
-Swissvax Wheel brush
-Clayed with Z18 and Megs LT as lube
-Tires with Zaino Z16
-Glass Zaino Z12 with PC and LC orange
Wetsanding
-Meguiars Unigrit 1500
-Meguiars Unigrit 2000
-Meguiars Unigrit 2500
-Meguiars medium sanding block
Interior
-Vacuumed
-303 Carpet Cleaner
-Scrubbed with various brushes
-Leather with Megs APC 5:1
-Lexol Leather Conditioner
-Stoner's Invisible Glass on windows
-vents and console cleaned with various brushes/qtips
-Interior panels cleaned with Megs APC 5:1
Correction
-Menzerna Power Gloss on Meguiars W4 wool
-Meguiars 105 on Meguiars yellow SOLO wool
-Menzerna SIP on LC yellow
-Menzerna SIP on LC orange
-Menzerna 106FA on LC white
-Menzerna PO85RD on LC red
LSP
-Swissvax Cleaner Fluid
-Swissvax Concorso by hand
When current owner picked it up
Condition of the car when it arrived to me
Graphic images of swirls....
This is where the rodents would climb in and out of the engine bay. This actually cleaned up very well.
