Advice for Newb--Oxidized 1990 white BMW (long)

[Flat]

Accumulator, you have the patience of a saint. That said, this isn't going to end well.... It seems the OP is in more for confirmation of his purchases, than advice.

Maybe he does, he could have just as easily skipped over this thread.

Not sure what you meant won't end well...the car? While not finished, the paint that was worked came out amazing. After a little research and some practice on a spare decklid, using the rotary started to mesh. Not gonna write a novel here, but knowing what this car looked like before, I'm nothing short of thrilled with how it came out, especialy certain areas.

I'd rather waste some time and bandwith (and hey, maybe it's not a waste after all) than have somebody [mess] up their car.



Looking back at the first post on this thread, that "repainted, thin paint" stuff only makes me more certain that the rotary is a bad idea.



Eh, by the time Flat buys the right backing plate and pads and products it's gonna cost some money too.



I think I'd rather have him use the polisher his girlfriend bought him and some OTC stuff from Meguiar's.



Actually, for the best bang for the buck I'd return the rotary and put some of the $26.99 into buying Meg's Ultimate Compound and hope it finishes out OK on white.. maybe just do that (by hand) and wax it.



Yeah, if I were beamed down to his shop, right now, with what he has at his disposal, *I* would do that car by hand even if I had to use the M02 and the Malco Rejuvenator. I'm not the most risk-averse guy when it comes to doing this stuff either



OK, Flat, ball's in your court Hope things go well, whatever you decide to do.

I'll go into more detail later and upload pictures when the UPS guy gets here with my camera cord!



Ended up using Meg #2 fine cut with the rotary on the trunklid to start. Followed with Rejuv and then the Flash, looks amazing. The trunk has a solid coat of paint from the respray in ~'99. Same for the roof, good paint that came back very well after the Meg/Rejuv/Flash.



Then moved to the hood which has pretty thin paint. Called a buddy who parts out BMW's to see if he has an Alpine White II hood for an E30, and sure enough he just got a 325i parts car in, same color with good paint on the hood. I ended up doing the Meg, Rejuv and Flash on my current hood also just for grins, and it came out okay but not as good as the decklid/roof.



Didn't get a chance to finish the polishing on the rest of the body panels, will be doing that this week. I spent a lot of time clearing leaves/twigs, etc out of trunk jam, rain gutters, under front fenders, cowl area, etc. Also cleared out all 4 sunroof drains. This car sat for a while outside and it looks like it was under a tree unfortunately.



Plenty more work to do :xyxthumbs

 

[Accumulator]

Flat- Glad to hear things are going well! Nothing would please me more than my fears being unfounded



If you haven't done so yet, pull the car out into the sun and make sure you don't have any "holograms" (rainbow-like faint swirls). Those are quite common with rotary work and are my primary concern. White is incredibly forgiving, so maybe all is well, but I'd find out now rather than later. Eh, they're a pet peeve of mine so maybe I make a bigger deal out of them than is necessaryl



It'll be interesting to see how that presumably identical hood matches!



Since the car was sitting for so long, I'd pull the inner front fender liners and clear out the [stuff] you'll find in there. The drain holes/channels on those are often clogged with who-knows-what even if it *wasn't* parked under a tree. Apologies if you've already done this.

 

[percynjpn]

For oxidized paint (after washing, claying), wet sanding is your friend. You can avoid gumming up your pads, and then follow up with various compounds/polishes.



As an aside, why is it (IME) that white paint oxidizes more than other colors? Or am I just nuts?

 

[Accumulator]

For oxidized paint (after washing, claying), wet sanding is your friend...

After a seeming rash of "oops!" occurances, I've been steering newbies away from wetsanding



Now if I could get 'em all to stay *very* gentle with micromesh 4K or something, that'd be different. But people want to run out and get something OTC locally and, well,... you can guess the rest.



Oh, and sometimes I can see doing stuff like that *before* claying, lest the clay get all loaded up.

As an aside, why is it (IME) that white paint oxidizes more than other colors? Or am I just nuts?

Now that I haven't noticed ! But then I don't see all that many oxidized cars up close and I guess I never look at other people's white cars closely enough to notice just why they look so crappy. I guess oxidation shows more on colors where the "dead whitish paint" is more obvious.



Maybe it's something specific to your locale :think: