cleanyourcar
New member
Well, when I was set a challenge by my brother to go and fix his rather sorry looking Nissan 200sx I couldn't resist. So I packed up my tools and headed off down south to the sunny south coast.
Here's what i was faced with. A rather sorry state of a 200sx, infact it's not often you see paint in such bad condition. Heavily swirled, scuffed, scratched keyed and generally unloved, really I thought this car could do with a respray. A couple of panels I later found out had already had rather poor resprays. Infact the best way I could describe the condition of the paint was if it had been sanded, totally devoid of any protection and it made the black look almost purple.
You can see in the above picture how bad the poor the respray on the door is and how flat it makes the paint look.
This shows the area of the bonnet which was keyed, there's no way that was coming out as it was a deep gouge. It does highlight just how badly swirled the paint was though.
I started the restoration of the paint by giving the car a good clay with Sonus Black and Clay Lube. The bonnet was so rough it was unbelievable really how rough it was, I think you could have lit a match on it.
Here's a shot of the products (again it highlights just how bad the swirls were):
Once the car had been thoroughly clayed, it was fully masked off using 3434 tape to protect the trims, the gazebo was errected and suntan applied to the back of my neck as it was already starting to burn
I started with the bonnet, and didn't mess about and went straight at it with SFX-1 on a 4" pad. I also tried Optimum Hyper Compound and Poorboys SSR 2.5 and SSR 3, but found i was achieving the best results with the Sonus SFX-1 so stuck with that and followed round with Sonus SFX-2. I was going to try a full product test, but soon gave up as the task in hand began to dawn on me.
Anyway here's a shot of the bonnet straight after a blast with the SFX-1 (I did the area twice)
Anyway it became obvious it was going to be a long but rewarding day. Here are a few before and afters to show what I was having to work with.
Anyway she was polishing up nicely, but alas it was time to call it a day:
The next morning I just had a few panels to finish, including that badly resprayed door, then I could start finishing her off with SFX-3 and Pinnacle Signature II.
Heres a couple of those over exposed pictures people love:
:doublesho suddenly that respray isn't looking to bad!
All the tyres and trim were dressed with Sonus Tyre and bumper dressing.
Here's what i was faced with. A rather sorry state of a 200sx, infact it's not often you see paint in such bad condition. Heavily swirled, scuffed, scratched keyed and generally unloved, really I thought this car could do with a respray. A couple of panels I later found out had already had rather poor resprays. Infact the best way I could describe the condition of the paint was if it had been sanded, totally devoid of any protection and it made the black look almost purple.
You can see in the above picture how bad the poor the respray on the door is and how flat it makes the paint look.
This shows the area of the bonnet which was keyed, there's no way that was coming out as it was a deep gouge. It does highlight just how badly swirled the paint was though.
I started the restoration of the paint by giving the car a good clay with Sonus Black and Clay Lube. The bonnet was so rough it was unbelievable really how rough it was, I think you could have lit a match on it.
Here's a shot of the products (again it highlights just how bad the swirls were):
Once the car had been thoroughly clayed, it was fully masked off using 3434 tape to protect the trims, the gazebo was errected and suntan applied to the back of my neck as it was already starting to burn
I started with the bonnet, and didn't mess about and went straight at it with SFX-1 on a 4" pad. I also tried Optimum Hyper Compound and Poorboys SSR 2.5 and SSR 3, but found i was achieving the best results with the Sonus SFX-1 so stuck with that and followed round with Sonus SFX-2. I was going to try a full product test, but soon gave up as the task in hand began to dawn on me.
Anyway here's a shot of the bonnet straight after a blast with the SFX-1 (I did the area twice)
Anyway it became obvious it was going to be a long but rewarding day. Here are a few before and afters to show what I was having to work with.
Anyway she was polishing up nicely, but alas it was time to call it a day:
The next morning I just had a few panels to finish, including that badly resprayed door, then I could start finishing her off with SFX-3 and Pinnacle Signature II.
Heres a couple of those over exposed pictures people love:
:doublesho suddenly that respray isn't looking to bad!
All the tyres and trim were dressed with Sonus Tyre and bumper dressing.
