Opel Astra Coupe Bertone - Second Youth

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I spent the first weekend in June with a beautiful Opel Astra Coupe Bertone from 2001 (belongs to my oldest son). The car was thoroughly cleaned, the paint has been corrected and polished and at the end all external elements was coated with products that improve water repellency. The car was not in the best condition as shown in the following images.

Saturday, I started from exact the car wash. The whole process took me an absurd amount of time mainly because of the wheels, which probably never been properly cleaned I used the strongest products that I have and a whole arsenal of different brushes and cloths. After the wheels the car was sprayed with an "active" foam (also the strongest that I have) to soften as much as possible the old dirt, insects and tar. The next steps were: clean the various nooks and crannies, proper wash with two buckets technique, the fight with black dots and get rid of the metal "dirt" and clay. I used a product called "ClayBlock Professional" from Chemical Guys which worked very comfortable, but you have to be careful with it - it is a very aggressive product and IMO not suitable for cleaning cars that will not go to the step of paint correction. At the end of the car was very carefully dried and was ready for inspection of the paint.

to be continued...

 

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Paint on the Astra was in a very, very bad shape. I had very little time (it was already 16:00 on Saturday), so that I decided to use a two-stage paint correction and protection from Meguiar's called DA Microfiber Correction System in conjunction with a Dual Action machine (DAS-6 PRO from CYC ). I also wanted to remove or minimize some of the deeper scratches, especially those on the left side of the car. For this work I used water paper 2000 and 3000 as well as my most aggressive kit for paint correction - Menzerna polishes, small wool pad, a set of hard foam pads and a small rotary polisher. I removed about 70% of the largest scratches and I might more but not having a paint thickness gauge I preferred not to risk it because the mistake would end in mandatory painting At the end have been polished (using the above aggressive set) all wheels. The whole process took me about 11 hours.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWiJCjzNI_U]Opel Astra Coupe - Second Youth, effect of paint correction - YouTube[/ame]

to be continued...