Wow, how about that. I'm doing a writeup. This one belongs to a friend of mine. He bought it with 50K miles on it. It now has just shy of 200K on it. No longer his daily driver, it now spends its time towing his race car to the track and back. It lives a hard life. He told me that since he's owned it, he "thinks [he] waxed it once." This wasn't going to be a "full correction" type of detail, since the truck gets used as a tow vehicle and will inevitably get beaten up some more. Consider this a "one and a half step." I worked hard on the deep scratches that were visible to the casual observer, and one-stepped the rest. We had set a budget, so I fiddled about with the truck until I felt like I'd done the right amount of work. Annoyingly, about two hours into the job, the water at the client's house was shut off. Turns out that the town was doing maintenance on a main line a block over, and the water ended up being off for close to five hours. Which was annoying. But it also allowed me to work on stuff other than the paint for much of a day, leaving the second day available to work on the paint. Interior: Ford truck interiors seem to withstand a heck of a lot of abuse, so this wasn't too tough. Carpets got "Witchcraft in a Bottle" MS Extraction Plus with a really aggressive "Magna" carpet brush that I also got at MS. Stubborn spots got MS' solvent-based carpet aerosol, "Carpet Spotter HD." The plastic and vinyl got a new addition to the arsenal - MS Tidal Wave. I like MS Leather and Plastic Cleaner, but even with some fragrance poured into it, the scent is awful. Tidal Wave seems to clean just as well, and smells like lemon zest. I wish I'd tried this product a lot sooner, it's great. After getting cleaned, I treated it all with 1Z Vinyl-Rubber Care. In terms of looks, I'd say it's between 1Z Cockpit Premium (which has no look at all) and Vinylex or 303. It also smells great. I highly recommend this interior dressing. Glass got Adam's Glass Cleaner, another product I'm very happy with. Engine: Considering how awful the exterior of the truck was, the engine room wasn't too bad. Mostly it was dusty; no sign of any fluid leaks, so this was easy. I'm guessing that most people here are familiar with the "JL Method" for detailing an engine bay. Rinse the cold engine, spray liberally with MS SGS (3:1), and agitate as needed. Rinse again, dry with leaf blower, then apply Meguiar's Hyperdressing (4:1). Close the hood, start the engine for 10-15 minutes to set it up, then shut off the engine and wipe off the excess. Wheels and tires: The tires came clean pretty easily with some MS SGS (3:1) and a stiff brush I keep just for tires. The wheels, though, were a different matter altogether. After SGS didn't make a dent, I moved to MS Wheel Brite (4:1), which is a Meg's WB workalike with more phosphoric acid in it. To my astonishment, this didn't do a lot. I mean, they got better, but my guess is that this grime had been on there for at least ten years. To get them any better, I'd need to remove the wheels, and that wasn't an option, since the truck still had its trailer, with race car on it, attached! The center caps, which are made of plastic, are beyond saving. I suppose I could have tried some Tardis, but I didn't want to risk that on plastic and possibly ruin them. File these wheels under "you can't win them all." Headlights: First I cleaned them with some MS SGS. Then it was 2000 grit 3M wet sanding paper, followed by my old PC7424, a 4" Uber yellow cutting pad, and some Malco 1500-grit compound called "Foam Restoration Compound." Exhaust: I didn't even bother. It's the original exhaust, with no tip on it. Trying to polish part of it would have looked silly, and I certainly wasn't going to polish it all the way up to the muffler. Jambs and weatherstripping: S100 TCW dealt with the grime in the jambs nicely. I'm not sure I'll buy TCW (or it's cousin, P21S TAW) again though. It's a great product, but to me, it doesn't do anything that MS SGS doesn't do at about 10% of the price. The weatherstripping eventually got the same 1Z Vinyl-Rubber Care that the interior got. Wash: Naturally, I used the 2BM as always. In the soap bucket was quite a lot of Majestic Solutions Super Green Stuff APC. The truck was really, really dirty, so I wanted to clean it as best I could before claying it (more on that later). It's about here that the water got turned off. When I finally got to do it, the sponge slid across the paint like it was on sandpaper. I could hear the dirt. And the dirt wasn't coming off. I washed it again, and that didn't do much either. Hmm. That's probably going to be an issue come clay time. More on that in a minute. Trim: I had plenty of time since the water didn't work, so I used Black Wow here. I find BW kind of hateful to work with, but I can't argue with the results. The stuff does look good. The rub strips down the sides couldn't be saved. They appear to be injection molded red plastic. The black stuff you can see on this trim in the pictures is actually embedded in little tiny cracks in the trim. Strange. I made the call that there was probably no saving them, and moved on. Clay: I started off with my favorite, Bilt-Hamber soft. It quickly became obvious that I would need a LOT of clay. And, since the dirt problem was so severe, I decided that it hardly made sense to use my BH stuff on this truck. All that dirt was going to mar the paint anyway, there was no way around it. So I got out the big iron - Majestic Solutions purple "aggressive" clay. I also mixed up a bottle of ONR for clay lube, with about triple the amount of ONR concentrate than normal. This provided a bit more lubrication and quite a lot more cleaning power. Eventually I ran out of purple (!!) and switched to MS blue. That's right. An entire, 200g bar of MS purple. Gone. But it did an excellent job. Took me a while, and several passes in a lot of areas like the roof, but to my amazement, the truck was smooth. Marred up like heck, but smooth. Paint correction: I was all over the place on this one. I've taken a liking to a Malco compound called "Foam Restoration Compound." I've abandoned Menz. Power Gloss in favor of this stuff. The Malco stuff cuts hard and fast, works with lots of different pads, and cleans up incredibly easy. It's my favorite cutting compound. I brought out a Meg's Solo wool pad when needed, but if I'm honest, I don't really enjoy working with wool, so I only used it when absolutely necessary. My favorite was a green 3M UK foam cutting pad. I'd forgotten how good this pad is. It cut just as well as the Uber yellow foam pad, but seemed to finish a little better. I only have one 3M green, though, so I was soon back to Uber yellow, which itself is a great pad. After that, it was Menz. Power Finish with Uber green. I also used my 3M UK yellow, but on this particular paint, the Uber pad corrected better but still finished down well. Power Finish / Uber green is a great, great combo that I'd recommend to anyone. LSP: This truck lives outdoors and gets used like a truck. The owner isn't really a detailing kind of guy. And I hadn't gone for full correction, either. Let's see. What's durable, offers some filling, and looks great on red? Bilt Hamber Auto Balm, that's what. I'm back on a BHAB kick lately, and it's like reuniting with an old friend. I recently put it on my S2000 and was reminded how great it looks. I applied it with a cut up piece of an old zymol wash sponge, until I dropped it and had to switch to plain old yellow foam applicators. Pictures! Here are some befores. I've captioned a handful of them, but most should be pretty obvious. Befores: This photo is the only before that I've got that shows the cloudy headlights: The dent on the tailgate gave me fits during polishing... Both sides had this dull paint below the rear side windows, from rain water running down on it for years: Here's that clay I was talking about. This is the blue stuff, and I took this photo after doing the a-pillar of the truck with it! This is the only "before" I got of the interior, and it's badly overexposed. But the interior wasn't too terrible anyway. Afters On the left, the panel behind the door has been compounded with the Malco stuff. Not a bad finish from a cutting compound! Pre-LSP: No tire dressing yet in this photo obviously The tailgate came out nicely, in spite of the dent in it making my polisher jump around all over the place: The headlights came out nicely. The bumpers were done later, with BHAB and an old applicator, which cleaned them up nicely. I didn't forget them, I promise! Anyway, I had to tread lightly around the plastic grille - the "chrome" is peeling off of it in a lot of places: The shots below this line are the ones I took with LSP on the truck; the ones above here were only after polishing: Thanks for looking!
Great job Karl, you and your BH AH kick lately. Is that the pot I sold to you or your original one? If it was the one I gave you see any difference in using it vs. yours that had different look/consistency.
It's both of them. PJS told me on dw.co.uk that it was fine to mix the two together, so I did. No ill effects and it mixed in nicely.
Wow, thats alot of work for a truck that will probably look like poo very shortly if it lives outside. You did your part though and brought it back to life!
Damn Karl what a fantastic turn around. I wish I could take a trip to MS I want to pick up a few things maybe one day this year.
