Mercury Marauder - correction, Beeds coating, touch up, engine bay, & interior

[cf2121]

This is the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] Marauder I’ve done now, and 4[SUP]th[/SUP] car overall for this customer.

He and his friend are attending the Carlisle Ford Nationals this upcoming weekend and wanted their Marauders cleaned up and show car presentable. This included paint correction and Beeds coatings, interior clean ups, engine bay work, and touch up jobs.

As far as I could tell, the paint on this one was all factory original. It was on the softer side, and didn’t need more than 205 to cut through most of the defects. The panels that weren’t too swirled up were one stepped with Essence on a Microfiber cutting pad, while some panels were given M205 on a Rupes Yellow pad, then followed with Essence + Microfiber pad. I did a quick wipe down with Optimum Paint Prep before applying the touch up paint and coating the car with Beeds HD.

The interior needed a quick vacuum, the door jambs and doors were cleaned with D101 1:10, the seats were cleaned with Carpro Inside and wiped down with Poorboy’s Leather Stuff. I followed up on all the plastics and doors with 1Z Cockpit Premium. Carpets were cleaned with Optimum Fabric Clean & Protect.

The engine was cleaned with D101 1:4, a few small brushes, and dressed with Gyeon Tire.

I had restored the exhaust system about two months earlier, but unfortunately my phone reset itself and I lost all my pictures from then on. You can see a little bit of them on my IG here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BTB4XiMA3rJ/




Products used:

Wheels, tires, wheel wells:

Rupes M101

3D BDX

Meguiar’s D143 2:1 (tires)

Various brushes

Gyeon Q2 Tire Gel

Carpro Hydro2 (lsp)

Wash:

Meguiars D114

Decontamination:

3D BDX

D114 1:128

Adam’s Visco Clay

Correction:

Rupes 21

Rupes Mini

Meguiar’s M205

Rupes Yellow Pads

Carpro Essence

Meguiars Microfiber Pads

3m automotive tape

LSP:

Beeds HD

Glass:

Meguiar’s Glass Cleaner Concentrate

Carpro Ech2o

Exhaust tips:

Meguiar’s APC 4:1

Poorboy’s World Chrome Polish

Beeds HD (lsp)

Trim:

Gyeon Tire

Interior:

Vacuum

Optimum Carpet & Fabric Clean & Protect

1Z Cockpit Premium

D101 1:10

Poorboy’s Leather Stuff

Total time:

~9 hours

Thanks for looking & reading! Sorry for the lack of finished shots, it was raining from when I finished to when the customer came to pick it up.

 

[cf2121]

 

[atgonzales]

Nicely done

 

[BadgerRivFan]

Cool car and a great write-up. I appreciate you providing an itemized list of the products you used. Curious about using Essence with microfiber pads for final polishing... I thought mf pads w/Essense would only be used if you wanted cutting/correction, not to refine your finish prior to coating. Which Meguiar`s mf pads did you use for this step?

 

[cf2121]

Cool car and a great write-up. I appreciate you providing an itemized list of the products you used. Curious about using Essence with microfiber pads for final polishing... I thought mf pads w/Essense would only be used if you wanted cutting/correction, not to refine your finish prior to coating. Which Meguiar`s mf pads did you use for this step?

Thanks. I know what you mean. Some panels needed to be cut with M205 first, others needed a light polish with Essence. I used the microfiber with Essence on some panels because that`s all they needed. A light polish with only a few drops of Essence. From past experience I really like using microfiber pads on softer paint for one steps because I find they help finish down most polishes very nicely. I used the regular cutting discs. Haven`t tried the XTRA cut or finishing microfiber pads yet.

Really it`s just preference.

 

[Accumulator]

Heh heh, regulars here know I can`t resist a Panther Platform thread

cf2121- Nice work on a cool car, thanks for posting it! Looks like a nice job getting that Mustang blower to work on it too, wonder what else he`s done...

Interesting that you found the paint soft and were able to correct it so well with M205! All of my ("whale body"/`98-up) Panthers (they were all painted at the same facility with the same stuff) were "medium" by my standards, requiring something more aggressive by far for significant correction even via FLex 3401. Maybe the Rupes21 factored in big-time, that might explain it. Regardless, you sure got it looking nice.

And hey, that`s great work on the exhaust! How`d you go about that?

 

[cf2121]

Heh heh, regulars here know I can`t resist a Panther Platform thread

cf2121- Nice work on a cool car, thanks for posting it! Looks like a nice job getting that Mustang blower to work on it too, wonder what else he`s done...

Interesting that you found the paint soft and were able to correct it so well with M205! All of my ("whale body"/`98-up) Panthers (they were all painted at the same facility with the same stuff) were "medium" by my standards, requiring something more aggressive by far for significant correction even via FLex 3401. Maybe the Rupes21 factored in big-time, that might explain it. Regardless, you sure got it looking nice.

And hey, that`s great work on the exhaust! How`d you go about that?

Thanks!

All three I`ve done have been on the soft side. Granted, the first two were repainted, but this was all factory from what I could tell.

Exhaust I cleaned up with Meg`s APC first, then very carefully clayed the tips to get the tar deposits off, then polished the back ends with 0000 steel wool and Meg`s Mag polish & Poorboys Chrome polish. Coated them with Beeds afterwards.

 

[Accumulator]

cfc2121- That`s a great improvement for just some 0000 and the polishes! Maybe it`s been too long since I used steel wool for anything

And gee, I *wish* my previous Crown Vic had been a little softer! The current one didn`t need hammered that badly...