Testing My Abilities Part I

[LastDetail]

Hey everyone!
Well here we go, my roomate is a total car nut and as a result we have A LOT of cars sitting at our house in different states of repair. His absolute baby though is the car that he has had since he was 16, a 1991 Acura Integra LS. Now when I say he is a total car nut I do not mean that he cars looks-wise, he is definitly taking the term "All show and no go" to the extreme by ignoring the exterior of his car for the last decade or so. For the last year it has not had an engine as he has had other projects and no time to pay attention to his own stuff. ANYWAY, he was thinking that the car needed to be repainted as the exterior was too far gone. Since he was planning on repainting anyway I asked him if I could try to bring the paint back and really test my skills at paint revival. He said sure.

I decided that I wanted to try a bunch of different approaches and see what works best. Remember this car has received exactly 2 coats of wax in the last ten years and only been washed when it rained, (bad) or at the drive-thru car wash (worse).

First test that I wanted to try was to see if a ridiculously large number of coats of wax made any difference, so I began on the trunk lid.

Here is process and pictures.
Wash with water mixed with NXT wash in spray bottle.
rinse with water in spray bottle.
Claymagic clay (just this 1 sq. foot area took a Long time, I figure it would take at least 4 bars to do the whole car).
Wash with process above again.
SSR2.5 with LC Orange with PC speed:6
SSR2 with LC White with PC 3.5-4.5 X3

All of this polishing SIGNIFICANTLY reduced almost all of the oxidation, leaving a very nice smooth surface. My roomate was SHOCKED.

Now I wanted to test and see if applying a lunatic number of coats of wax made any difference. So I broke out the Natty's Blue and got to waxin.
Here are the pictures after THIRTEEN layers of wax.

Here are some pictures of the rest of the car just to show you what I'm workin with here.

Kinda makes your cringe huh?

And now here is the test area.

With a dead on shot thats how it looks. But when turning the halogen sideways to try and get a depth shot it takes on a milky washed out look.

Ain't that strange? So now I am convinced that MULTIPLE coats of wax is does not necassarily = Excellent. This seems counter-intuitive, I was waiting for the paint to literally look like it was dripping off the car. However this is stock paint from a car manufactured in either late '90 or early '91 that has been criminally neglected.

Stay tuned for the drivers side of the roof portion that I began today in which I want to test and see if multiple layers of sealant (EX-P) with 24 hour cure time between gives a different result. I was thinking 3-4 layers of sealant.

Anyone have any other ideas of tests? I have about 4 or 5 test areas left.
Thanks for reading!
Comments and and questions not only welcome, but REQUESTED!

 

[Jngrbrdman]

I'm confused... So you polished out a spot on the car and then slapped 13 coats of wax on it? The jury is still out on whether you can even layer waxes without just blending them together. I'm not sure one way or the other, but I do believe that layering 13 coats of wax in one day is going to look just about as good as one layer of wax. You should have polished out the whole deck and put 13 layers on one side and 1 layer on the other if you wanted to see if multiple layers made any difference.

Great job on the polish job. That paint looks flawless. You can't fault yourself when you are dealing with decade old paint that hasn't been cared for. There is damage that obviously can't be fixed with simple polishing. That car can definitely be brought back to life though. You've proved that with the deck polishing you've done.

 

[joyriide1113]

My Jet Black Paint looks milky in direct sunlight too! Even with only one coat of sealant.

 

[Jngrbrdman]

Some people would just call that 'carnauba glow'.

 

[LastDetail]

I'm confused... So you polished out a spot on the car and then slapped 13 coats of wax on it? The jury is still out on whether you can even layer waxes without just blending them together. I'm not sure one way or the other, but I do believe that layering 13 coats of wax in one day is going to look just about as good as one layer of wax.

Oh no no no! My mistake, I didn't realize how that looked. I did the polishing about a week ago, and have been spit-shining the wax on. No less than 8 hour apart, with a QD wipe down in between.