Most detailer postings I see are generally on well-kept vehicles, so here's a slight change of pace.
One of my best friends is the original owner of an 8-year old blue Mustang which has lived its entire life outdoors. I guess you could call it "weathered." He occasionally washes and waxes it (I'm not sure with which products), but I figured it's time for a nice thorough exterior detail in the tradition we focus here. He likes to maintain his own cars (mechanically), but he doesn't have a lot of time on up-keeping the paint. That's where I come in. Since he just moved into his first home, I figured this would be a house-warming present.
So let's get down to business. The following detail work spans over two weekends (exterior and engine bay only, no door jambs).
Exterior wash / clay:
Gilmour foam gun
Duragloss 901
1 bucket / grit guard / sheepskin mitt
Meguiar's Exterior QD
Danase medium clay (purple)
Clay Magic fine clay
Sonüs ultra-fine clay
Engine bay:
P21S Total Auto Wash
Boar's hair brush
Swissvax wheel brush
Old toothbrush
CD-2 Engine Detailer
Wheels / wells:
P21S Wheel Cleaner (gel)
Eagle One A2Z All Wheel & Tire Cleaner
Westley's Bleche White
Meguiar's All Purpose Cleaner
E-Z Detail Brush
Generic all-purpose brush
Paint correction:
Makita 9227
Porter Cable 7424
LC 6.5" and 4" orange
Meguiar's #105
Menzerna Super Intensive Polish (PO83)
Prep-All
Costco yellow microfiber towels
LSP:
Zaino Z-2 PRO
Zaino Z-5 PRO
Zaino ZFX
Zaino Z-8
Tires / trim:
Zaino Z-16
Poorboy's Trim Restorer
Onto the walk-around examination... We all know what a Mustang looks like and I'm not bothering with full-body shots. Let's start with a grease monkey's favorite part of the car - the engine bay where all the grime, filth, built-up oil deposits, and road disease lives. Something here tells me that I shouldn't expect to make this sparkling clean given time I have for this job.
The roof ... I guess needs a rinse.
Same goes with the C-pillar. I like the dried-up leaf stuck between the panels. Nice touch.
Cool abstract white-out pattern. Or perhaps this is a scratch. Ouch. And unfortunately, this isn't the only scratch like this around the car.
This bug had a bad day.
Hmm... A sign of things to come. The brake light needs wetsanding.
Hey cool - a spatial anomaly forming a temporal bubble in the space-time continuum.
Beware the late-night driver with the foggy headlights.
Bug Suicide Panel of Death.
Not safe to eat off of.
I started with the engine. Warmed it up for a couple of minutes, opened the hood, removed the insulator padding from underneath, covered up the electrical box (with saran wrap of all things), misted the bay with water, sprayed P21S TAW all over, let dwell for a few minutes, and agitated with various brushes. Rinse, repeat as needed. Once I was done, CD-2 was sprayed all over, sat for 15 minutes, then we took a 15 minute drive to cure the product. Once back at the house, I wiped off excess CD-2 and voilà . Here's an indoor shot of the result after some polishing work (notice the dusting in the background). Sure, it could be better, but I wasn't going for an engine bay to barbecue out of.
Next up were the tires. I sprayed them down with Bleche White - and the tires started melting onto the concrete!
Actually, it was just the brown gunk of rubber love oozing off the sidewall.
I decided what the heck... We raised the car and removed the tires one-by-one to do a more thorough wheel cleaning. Caked-on chocolate brake dust, anyone? We hit it with some Eagle One A2Z and agitated with our general-purpose brush.
Looking at this makes me lose my appetite for dinner...
There were a lot of tar deposits remaining all over inside and we left a lot of brake dust behind the spokes. It would've been a lot of overtime work to do it right, so we decided to just do a basic cleaning and tackle it more thoroughly another day. We lifted the tire off the ground and realized that a biology experiment was growing underneath. Behold - the Foaming Monster of Wheel Cleaner and Grime!
Just for comparison, we actually did three of the wheels with the P21S gel which worked a little better as it was easier brushing the brake dust off. After all, it better provide superior performance with all that money I paid.
We then did a superficial job on the wheel wells while each tire was off. Meg's APC (4:1) and our basic brush came into action. I was too lazy to grab the gas-powered Karcher from the back of the house to pressure wash a lot of this gunk off. We'll leave this to another day since time is of the essence and I wanted to get started on the polishing in the garage before daylight was out. This pic below is the passenger rear well partially scrubbed. My friend didn't realize there was paint underneath the gunk layer. I presume the road grime must've been sitting there all these years after he drove his car around in a mud puddle 6 years ago. I also sprayed some P21S TAW in there because chicks dig wheel wells cleaned with German chemicals. Or, something.
We then hosed-down the rest of the car, foam gun pre-soak with Duragloss 901, then a second foaming with the sheepskin mitt / bucket / grit guard combo, occasionally hosing down the mitt directly to flush off unseen debris.
My friend had never used a claybar before and he found it a therapeutic experience. Our particular situation, however, wasn't easy going. Imagine a car that has been sitting outside for 8 years and never clayed, let alone washed maybe only once a month (or less frequently). It literally felt like 1000 grit sandpaper on the horizontal surfaces. I had bought medium-grade clay just for his car and while it picked up a lot of contaminants, it still took a while. We used Clay Magic on some other areas just to see how different the experience was. Below is your average Blue Magic claybar after only half a C-pillar:
This clay was not having a good day. It's like answering nature's call on the porcelain throne and then apologizing to the toilet afterwards. You could hear the paint laughing at us. Noticeable are the apparent clay residue, QD, and contaminants running down the quarter-panel next to the foam. Our purple Danase clay was picking up more than that after a small 6" x 6" area on the roof.
No wonder why when washing the water never beads or sheets off. It's as if they stuck to the surface because of the contaminants. We used car soap for the lubricant as well as Meg's QD. I've never seen a mixture of wash foam and rail dust - notice the mocha-brown streaks in the suds.
When we did some of the vertical surfaces with just QD and clay, light-brown liquid was running off the paint like diluted mud-water. We followed-up over some parts of the car with the Sonüs clay which felt like soft taffy and was a joy to work with. I almost took a bite out of it.
Once the car was rolled into the garage, the 500W halogen was turned on and formal paint inspection began. It's safe to say that the surface condition wasn't exactly Autopian level.
I took one look and said to hell with starting with a white pad. I tested a panel with SIP on a 6.5" orange pad via the "zenith bell curve," peaking at 1500 RPM.
I originally bought M105 for use on my bathroom vanity top, but I figured I'd give it a shot here and see what so many are raving about.
Wow! All I did was spread it quickly at 600 RPM and then a couple of passes at 1500 RPM on a 6.5" orange pad. Amazing - and it finished down a bit sharper than SIP when removing the first layer of swirls. Here's another shot of the fender.
And a 50 / 50 on the trunk after one application of M105.
20 seconds per 12" x 12" section using M105 via rotary meant that I was going to use this sucker as my first step over the entire car. What an incredible time-saver. My friend would've been happy with just this level of improvement. However, I was going for all-or-nothing / do-or-die / 100% defect-free correction. Or that's a bit optimistic with this paint ... so maybe 90%. Well, ok, maybe 70% will do. I also had an LC PFW pad on-hand so I tried it out. It certainly doesn't grip like the foam pads and it's much easier to handle, but I opted to stick with foam since I'm more used to it for now.
Most areas got two applications of M105 and while the vast majority of swirls and scratches were taken out, some still remain and I was hesitant to do another compounding pass without a paint meter assuring me I had plenty of clear to work with. My friend tends to put his shopping boxes and grocery bags on his paint while packing them into the car, so the paint surface has been generally neglected and the results thus far dimmed my hope for 100% correction. Here's an example of the roof before polishing (the brown spots are bird bombings).
My friend mentioned something about carrying Christmas trees on the car or being swiped by low-hanging branches a lot. I guess that explains the condition. And here's what 20 seconds of M105 does.
One example (out of many) bird dropping etchings that are much more obvious now that the removed oxidation can no longer mask them.
I stepped down to SIP with the PC and 4" orange pads for a few places to clear up minor scratches. The gloss and reflection became much sharper with the second-stage SIP polishing. Given the limited time I had for this project (and the fact that my friend lives about an hour away from me which translates to 2 hours of driving each day), I decided to forgoe the final polish stage I was planning on with either 106FF or Z-PC via white pad. A test spot didn't really refine the finish enough for me to justify spending the time on it for now. I also left the bumpers alone since my friend needs to remove them anyway and do some work. And while I'm eliminating things from the list, I decided to do the headlight and trunk brake light wetsanding another day.
In other words, I'm an amateur so I'm slow. Shut up.
Here's a final reflection shot of the paint. RIDS were everywhere.
Plastic trim and tires were handled with Z-16 and Poorboy's Trim Restorer.
I bought Zaino a year ago solely because of ZFX - applying 3 coats in a day is convenient. Not much of it is needed at each application and one bottle would last me practically forever. I figure given the durability of Zaino and the fact that my friend's never going to have time for paint maintenance (especially with a newborn on-hand), Z-2 / Z-5 would be ideal for the next 6 months or more.
(I also need an excuse to use this stuff up so I can go back to using Klasse SG, Duragloss Aquawax, or whatever's still sitting in my supply cabinet.)
Topped off with Z-8 all around. It's been steadily raining this last weekend so no sun shots or hologram checking. I'm not a big fan of whole-car beauty shots anyway so we'll just leave it off here.
So that's it. Neither 100% correction nor a flawless, pristine finish was achieved, but at least it's a dramatic improvement from the original. I'm not satisfied with the results of my attempted and incomplete handiwork, but the paint was in horrible condition to begin with. This is only the third car I've worked on, so a real professional would've probably aced all this in a day. The downside is that some of the baked-in paint defects are much more noticeable now, including rock chips and some small areas of clearcoat failure due to bird etching (the micro-cracks are noticeable).
As for the interior... Well, let's just say that's another long weekend project.
One of my best friends is the original owner of an 8-year old blue Mustang which has lived its entire life outdoors. I guess you could call it "weathered." He occasionally washes and waxes it (I'm not sure with which products), but I figured it's time for a nice thorough exterior detail in the tradition we focus here. He likes to maintain his own cars (mechanically), but he doesn't have a lot of time on up-keeping the paint. That's where I come in. Since he just moved into his first home, I figured this would be a house-warming present.
So let's get down to business. The following detail work spans over two weekends (exterior and engine bay only, no door jambs).
Exterior wash / clay:
Gilmour foam gun
Duragloss 901
1 bucket / grit guard / sheepskin mitt
Meguiar's Exterior QD
Danase medium clay (purple)
Clay Magic fine clay
Sonüs ultra-fine clay
Engine bay:
P21S Total Auto Wash
Boar's hair brush
Swissvax wheel brush
Old toothbrush
CD-2 Engine Detailer
Wheels / wells:
P21S Wheel Cleaner (gel)
Eagle One A2Z All Wheel & Tire Cleaner
Westley's Bleche White
Meguiar's All Purpose Cleaner
E-Z Detail Brush
Generic all-purpose brush
Paint correction:
Makita 9227
Porter Cable 7424
LC 6.5" and 4" orange
Meguiar's #105
Menzerna Super Intensive Polish (PO83)
Prep-All
Costco yellow microfiber towels
LSP:
Zaino Z-2 PRO
Zaino Z-5 PRO
Zaino ZFX
Zaino Z-8
Tires / trim:
Zaino Z-16
Poorboy's Trim Restorer
Onto the walk-around examination... We all know what a Mustang looks like and I'm not bothering with full-body shots. Let's start with a grease monkey's favorite part of the car - the engine bay where all the grime, filth, built-up oil deposits, and road disease lives. Something here tells me that I shouldn't expect to make this sparkling clean given time I have for this job.
The roof ... I guess needs a rinse.
Same goes with the C-pillar. I like the dried-up leaf stuck between the panels. Nice touch.
Cool abstract white-out pattern. Or perhaps this is a scratch. Ouch. And unfortunately, this isn't the only scratch like this around the car.
This bug had a bad day.
Hmm... A sign of things to come. The brake light needs wetsanding.
Hey cool - a spatial anomaly forming a temporal bubble in the space-time continuum.
Beware the late-night driver with the foggy headlights.
Bug Suicide Panel of Death.
Not safe to eat off of.
I started with the engine. Warmed it up for a couple of minutes, opened the hood, removed the insulator padding from underneath, covered up the electrical box (with saran wrap of all things), misted the bay with water, sprayed P21S TAW all over, let dwell for a few minutes, and agitated with various brushes. Rinse, repeat as needed. Once I was done, CD-2 was sprayed all over, sat for 15 minutes, then we took a 15 minute drive to cure the product. Once back at the house, I wiped off excess CD-2 and voilà . Here's an indoor shot of the result after some polishing work (notice the dusting in the background). Sure, it could be better, but I wasn't going for an engine bay to barbecue out of.
Next up were the tires. I sprayed them down with Bleche White - and the tires started melting onto the concrete!
Actually, it was just the brown gunk of rubber love oozing off the sidewall.
I decided what the heck... We raised the car and removed the tires one-by-one to do a more thorough wheel cleaning. Caked-on chocolate brake dust, anyone? We hit it with some Eagle One A2Z and agitated with our general-purpose brush.
Looking at this makes me lose my appetite for dinner...
There were a lot of tar deposits remaining all over inside and we left a lot of brake dust behind the spokes. It would've been a lot of overtime work to do it right, so we decided to just do a basic cleaning and tackle it more thoroughly another day. We lifted the tire off the ground and realized that a biology experiment was growing underneath. Behold - the Foaming Monster of Wheel Cleaner and Grime!
Just for comparison, we actually did three of the wheels with the P21S gel which worked a little better as it was easier brushing the brake dust off. After all, it better provide superior performance with all that money I paid.
We then did a superficial job on the wheel wells while each tire was off. Meg's APC (4:1) and our basic brush came into action. I was too lazy to grab the gas-powered Karcher from the back of the house to pressure wash a lot of this gunk off. We'll leave this to another day since time is of the essence and I wanted to get started on the polishing in the garage before daylight was out. This pic below is the passenger rear well partially scrubbed. My friend didn't realize there was paint underneath the gunk layer. I presume the road grime must've been sitting there all these years after he drove his car around in a mud puddle 6 years ago. I also sprayed some P21S TAW in there because chicks dig wheel wells cleaned with German chemicals. Or, something.
We then hosed-down the rest of the car, foam gun pre-soak with Duragloss 901, then a second foaming with the sheepskin mitt / bucket / grit guard combo, occasionally hosing down the mitt directly to flush off unseen debris.
My friend had never used a claybar before and he found it a therapeutic experience. Our particular situation, however, wasn't easy going. Imagine a car that has been sitting outside for 8 years and never clayed, let alone washed maybe only once a month (or less frequently). It literally felt like 1000 grit sandpaper on the horizontal surfaces. I had bought medium-grade clay just for his car and while it picked up a lot of contaminants, it still took a while. We used Clay Magic on some other areas just to see how different the experience was. Below is your average Blue Magic claybar after only half a C-pillar:
This clay was not having a good day. It's like answering nature's call on the porcelain throne and then apologizing to the toilet afterwards. You could hear the paint laughing at us. Noticeable are the apparent clay residue, QD, and contaminants running down the quarter-panel next to the foam. Our purple Danase clay was picking up more than that after a small 6" x 6" area on the roof.
No wonder why when washing the water never beads or sheets off. It's as if they stuck to the surface because of the contaminants. We used car soap for the lubricant as well as Meg's QD. I've never seen a mixture of wash foam and rail dust - notice the mocha-brown streaks in the suds.
When we did some of the vertical surfaces with just QD and clay, light-brown liquid was running off the paint like diluted mud-water. We followed-up over some parts of the car with the Sonüs clay which felt like soft taffy and was a joy to work with. I almost took a bite out of it.
Once the car was rolled into the garage, the 500W halogen was turned on and formal paint inspection began. It's safe to say that the surface condition wasn't exactly Autopian level.
I took one look and said to hell with starting with a white pad. I tested a panel with SIP on a 6.5" orange pad via the "zenith bell curve," peaking at 1500 RPM.
I originally bought M105 for use on my bathroom vanity top, but I figured I'd give it a shot here and see what so many are raving about.
Wow! All I did was spread it quickly at 600 RPM and then a couple of passes at 1500 RPM on a 6.5" orange pad. Amazing - and it finished down a bit sharper than SIP when removing the first layer of swirls. Here's another shot of the fender.
And a 50 / 50 on the trunk after one application of M105.
20 seconds per 12" x 12" section using M105 via rotary meant that I was going to use this sucker as my first step over the entire car. What an incredible time-saver. My friend would've been happy with just this level of improvement. However, I was going for all-or-nothing / do-or-die / 100% defect-free correction. Or that's a bit optimistic with this paint ... so maybe 90%. Well, ok, maybe 70% will do. I also had an LC PFW pad on-hand so I tried it out. It certainly doesn't grip like the foam pads and it's much easier to handle, but I opted to stick with foam since I'm more used to it for now.
Most areas got two applications of M105 and while the vast majority of swirls and scratches were taken out, some still remain and I was hesitant to do another compounding pass without a paint meter assuring me I had plenty of clear to work with. My friend tends to put his shopping boxes and grocery bags on his paint while packing them into the car, so the paint surface has been generally neglected and the results thus far dimmed my hope for 100% correction. Here's an example of the roof before polishing (the brown spots are bird bombings).
My friend mentioned something about carrying Christmas trees on the car or being swiped by low-hanging branches a lot. I guess that explains the condition. And here's what 20 seconds of M105 does.
One example (out of many) bird dropping etchings that are much more obvious now that the removed oxidation can no longer mask them.
I stepped down to SIP with the PC and 4" orange pads for a few places to clear up minor scratches. The gloss and reflection became much sharper with the second-stage SIP polishing. Given the limited time I had for this project (and the fact that my friend lives about an hour away from me which translates to 2 hours of driving each day), I decided to forgoe the final polish stage I was planning on with either 106FF or Z-PC via white pad. A test spot didn't really refine the finish enough for me to justify spending the time on it for now. I also left the bumpers alone since my friend needs to remove them anyway and do some work. And while I'm eliminating things from the list, I decided to do the headlight and trunk brake light wetsanding another day.
In other words, I'm an amateur so I'm slow. Shut up.
Here's a final reflection shot of the paint. RIDS were everywhere.
Plastic trim and tires were handled with Z-16 and Poorboy's Trim Restorer.
I bought Zaino a year ago solely because of ZFX - applying 3 coats in a day is convenient. Not much of it is needed at each application and one bottle would last me practically forever. I figure given the durability of Zaino and the fact that my friend's never going to have time for paint maintenance (especially with a newborn on-hand), Z-2 / Z-5 would be ideal for the next 6 months or more.
(I also need an excuse to use this stuff up so I can go back to using Klasse SG, Duragloss Aquawax, or whatever's still sitting in my supply cabinet.)
Topped off with Z-8 all around. It's been steadily raining this last weekend so no sun shots or hologram checking. I'm not a big fan of whole-car beauty shots anyway so we'll just leave it off here.
So that's it. Neither 100% correction nor a flawless, pristine finish was achieved, but at least it's a dramatic improvement from the original. I'm not satisfied with the results of my attempted and incomplete handiwork, but the paint was in horrible condition to begin with. This is only the third car I've worked on, so a real professional would've probably aced all this in a day. The downside is that some of the baked-in paint defects are much more noticeable now, including rock chips and some small areas of clearcoat failure due to bird etching (the micro-cracks are noticeable).
As for the interior... Well, let's just say that's another long weekend project.
