OK, so this wasn't the exact car used in the movie but it is close enough that I considered growing out a Burt Reynolds mustache in honor of having it in my shop. To be exact, it is 1979 Firebird Trans Am, modified up to a 455 cubic inch power plant with roller cams and Edelbrock headers among other things. It is a beast! While there was a great deal of positive aspects about the car, the paintwork was absolutely atrocious. As you will see from the pictures, it was hacked beyond belief with swirls and RIDS everywhere. The car had been sitting in the owner's shop and had basically been ignored for years. He is beginning to clean it up, although it won't be a full restore by any means. As such, he was interested in me just 'cleaning it up a bit'. Of course, on a black car with paint that is 30 years old, that would not be a walk in the park. As for the correction, I started with a rotary, Menz SIP, and an orange uber pad. The paint was fairly soft and lots of progress was made using this method. I later switched the orange pad out for a green polishing pad, as the orange was leaving a huge amount of marring and holos behind. I tried finishing down with 106fa on a rotary, but still had marring and holos left over. I switched to the Flex DA at this point, took it slow, and still ended up with the issues. As I was starting to pull my hair out that things weren't finishing down nicely, I tried po85rd and a blue uber on the Flex. This and many IPA wipes (the paint really soaked up the polishing oils) finally yielded an acceptable finish, although not perfect. Although the correction could have gone deeper, the owner was happy with the result and it really did end up looking like a whole new car. Anyway, onto the pics.:bla2: Car was foamed with CG CW and Dawn. It was hit with the 2BM and an equally aggressive soap combo for a wash. 30 years of tire grime... After an attack with a stiff brush and degreaser, the tires are black and the lettering white again. I was curious how much embedded iron would be in the paint, so I hit it with IronX and look what bled away! Car was dried with the AirWand and then pulled into the shop for further inspection. Here is a shot of the mucked up front end. More nasty looking paint Glass was covered in water spotting, more on that later. Hood shot, and you can see here that I have started to pull off all of the gold pinstriping as the owner wanted it redone (not by me thank God). Talk about time consuming! Used 3M GPAR and a lot of elbow grease to remove a majority of the adhesive and all of the striping. Any remaining adhesive came away during the correction stage. This was probably about 60% of the pinstriping removed You can see some of the pinstriping has been removed here, and the adhesive that was left behind. This was a complete PITA to remove. Very gently went around all of the remaining decals on the car as there was 30 years of polish/wax/grime residue underneath. The owner was not planning on replacing the decals, so this was the best technique to clean up the edges. Very subtle, but here is the difference before the (gentle) toothpick cleaning... And after... Onto the correction shots- enjoy! before after This shows on the left some of the bad marring left behind by the rotary on the soft paint. It also shows the correction. Right side corrected, left side not. before after Here is what I had to deal with anywhere the car had pinstripes. After a bit of polish work. Another 50/50 After finishing down the trunk So, here is the final product before LSP (Menz Power Lock). It is much better, but not 100%. So about those water spots...here is a before shot. I used DP High Performance Glass Restorer. Previously on the glass I had tried using Menz Power Gloss and SIP on an orange pad to remove the spotting, just to compare the two. DP was more effective and quicker. After DP... Exhaust tips before... After Onto the finished product. Sorrry, sun was setting fast. Enjoy and thanks for reading!
I find that if you remove Menzerna polish residue quickly you won't have anything left behind that will chalk up later under decals. So I didn't tape them up for that reason and also because it would have taken hours to do on the hood decal! I polished them out with a white pad, flex DA, 106fa, and a bit of CG Clear Seal sprayed on to keep things moist. Worked out great, brought some shine back to the decals and didn't leave new residue under the edges.
Yes he did! I told the owner to resist the urge to do cookies in dirt/gravel parking lots for a long time...:doh: Thanks!
nice work. the lettering on the tires sure came around didnt it. car was certainly a mess to start. i saw it a month ago. go ducks.
I always told myself that if I ever bought a TA like that, I would become an outlaw. No questions, no remorse, no thought process... just starting causing problems. Pipe dreams. Came out great BTW.
Ha ha, I see how it is, butter me up with compliments and then hit me below the belt about the quacks!! They should do well against Auburn, and there is always next year for the Beavs:shrug:
Funny you should mention that...I felt like a bit of an outlaw when I picked it up from the customer... was at a red light driving the car home. Light went green, I moved the shifter into what I thought was 1st, turned out it was reverse. Car started rolling back towards another car. Flustered, I redid the shifter and dropped the clutch hard while pressing down the accelerator a bit much. I had burned rubber through the intersection before I knew it.:headbang::shakehead:
Holy crap! That is some great work..beat to heck paint to glossy, wet, deep, and crisp black! Great job, satisfaction of doing a detail on a black car is great, it is just the day after when you release oh crap it wont last this way for long is the bad part.
