In the last months I've restored the paint on two pretty cool cars. First my own 968 and then a friends 951 Cabriolet. Links to both of the workblogs: 968: http://stigbjerke.com/blog/2014/3/2/workblog-porsche-968 951 Cab: http://stigbjerke.com/blog/2014/3/13/workblog-1991-porsche-951-cabriolet Here are some pictures: 1992 Porsche 968 1991 Porsche 944 Turbo Cabriolet (951 Cabriolet)
Workblog: 1992 Porsche 968 [Paint Restoration] March 2, 2014 My Porsche has been in desperate need for a paint restoration. This car had more love marks than a sailor's prostitute. Other than that the original 1992 paint job holds up pretty well, a lot of stone chips and some marks here and there, but I'll wait a year or two before giving this car a full paint job in a modern version of Guards Red(Indischrot Red). The car has about 278.000KM on it. I did a layer of wax on it when I got it, but winter driving with dirty roads have taken it's toll, this is around one week of driving since the last wash. After removing the stickers and any residue I started off doing the usual, washing the rims. This time I'm trying Maguire's "All wheel & Tire". It doesn't change color and it looks like it's just a normal heavy degreaser. It did work pretty good though, but I feel the Sonax wheel cleaner is more thorough. I let the wheel cleaner soak in for a good minute or so before I used my brushes and the wash mitt with soapy water. After I rinsed the wheels clean, I rinsed the car. As usual I used the two bucket method with a microfiber wash mitt. Instead of using traditional car soap to preserve the wax, I used dish soap to get the little was that was left off the car. to prepeare for the polish I clayed entire car top to down, using the soapy water as lubricant. I should have taken a picture of the cay after I used it, that was pretty gross, but the results were good. Especially around my tailpipe. As it's raining as I'm doing this I take the car inside to dry it off with a damp microfiber towel. When inside I could see all the scratches and marks in the paint, and believe me there was a lot of them. Here's a "before" photo of my front fender. Ok, so this car has the 80's and 90's Guards Red on it, meaning bright red and single staged. This should be fun. I started off doing a test area with a buffing pad and jeweler's polish, but I ended up deciding a full 2-step restoration was needed. Meaning one run of leveling fluid on a microfiber pad followed by jeweler's polish and a buffing pad. I did everything in small sections and cleaned the polish off as I moved to a different area. This is after a quick pass of polish. It took a few hours doing the entire car twice. Buffing with the jeweler's polish was pretty quick though. Leveling the paint is usually more hard work, and there's a lot of paint transfer. The only two things that lost paint was the driver side door handle, and the 968 emblem. They were both in pretty bad condition to begin with so no harm done. Everything went as expected if not better. And after two passes the paint was worlds better than when I started. Not perfect, but for that I need a full paintjob. The car was looking great and it was about 10pm. So the temptation on going out for a Saturday night drive was pretty big. But of course I can't drive it until I have at least one layer of wax on it. I used carnuba on the Scirocco I did last week, but for this I'm gonna need some hardwax. For this I used Sonax Xtreme Liquid Wax. The application gos as usual, wax the entire car and let it sit for an hour or two. Just remember to be sure you have gotten all the polishing compound off the car before you do this. After the entire car was waxed. I went inside and watched some Macgyver for a couple hours. Wax on, wax off. To get a really clean and streak-free surface use one microfiber towel to do the entire car, then repeat about 3-4 times, or until every part of the car is clean. Use spray wax on the top layer. And before you go out for a drive or take a picture, remember to put tire shine on the tires. You don't want a clean looking car with grey tires. Anything water-based will do, but I used AMMO Mud. Here's a picture of the finished car, looking good if I were to say so myself. Next car I'm gonna do is my stepmother's 2008 Saab 9-3 Vector 2.0T. Here's a full gear list: Rupes BigFoot LHR15ES 2x Maguire's Microfiber Washmitt Wheel brush Maguire's Clay Bar 2x Maguire's Microfiber cutting pads Uber foam buffing pad Wax Applicator pads Lots of Microfiber towel(10-20) Zalo Dish Soap Maguire's All Rim & Tire AMMO Spit (Spray wax) AMMO Mud (Tire shine) AMMO Leveling Fluid AMMO Jeweler's Polish SONAX Xtreme Liquid Wax Three 10L buckets
nicely done! So im guessing the driver's door and emblem were original paint, the rest may have been redone?. Thats assuming the car was originally finished in single stage paint... Well done and making it all come together
Thanks! I'll post it up like this from now. Edit: I tried posting it by just copying it but I got an error saying "You cannot use this image extension here" I had teh same problem trying to post pictures from my website earlier. Am I just doing something wrong or...? Everything should have the original paint, those areas have been exposed to more wear I guess. Might be a previous detail in the car's past.
What's the car in the third picture? Is that the same one as the one in the last picture? It has different wheels and stickers on the side.
It's the same car. I just put that sticker on after I restored the paint. (And took the other ones off prior to detailing of course.)
