A pair of Chevy...

[PursuitSE]

Well, this week-end it was back to reality to me... After washing and waxing mostly newer cars in good condition so far this year. I had my younger cousin calling last week asking if I wanted to do an inside/outisde wash and a wax on the car his friend just bought. Thinking it would be a newer car, I said yes without asking what kind of car it was... It turned out to be a 1999 Chevy Cavalier Z22 with almost 197000 km on the clock ! I know I should have asked...

Here is the car at arrival. The gold color did a great job hiding how dirty and dull the car realy was.






The interior was pretty bad, but I've seen worst for a car with that millage.
In the back, it looked with pool sand.









Now, the car being a 1999 beater, the owner didn't want me to go crazy.
Who would want to pay hundreds of dollars to detail a car paid less than 1000$...

Process :
Wash wheels and tires with APC and cheaper Simoniz soap
Wash with Gold Class, spraying APC on the front bumper to help removing all the caked bugs
Waxed with ColorX (I forgot how good this stuff works) followed with Xpress Synthetic Spray Wax
ASD on tires and trims
Vacuumed (took about an hour)
Cleaned plastics with warm water and APC+
Protected with NXT Tech Protect (found it hiding with the ColorX in my closet)
Cleaned glasses with Perfect Clarity Glass Cleaner

After :
I was kinda impressed with the shine I got from ColorX.



Clearcoat failure on the wing and back bumper.

[PursuitSE]

When my cousin saw what I did to his friend's car, he asked if I could do something similar to his car. He bought his first car last year for 800$, a 2003 Chevrolet Cavalier Z24 sedan. The car is black, but looked more like a dark grey with all those scratches and swirls on the paint. He didn't want the car perfect (obviously), but he wanted some shine back.
You can see on the pictures that the car got a cheap repaint around the fenders (looks almost like mat black).

Before :












The interior needed to get done as well, but he said he would do it later himself.


I washed the car with Gold Class, then decided on using the DA MF system on his car and it did a great job bringing some shine back. The paint was very dry and swirled with a lot of scratches. Then I dressed the tires with 2 coats of ASD.

[Andy M.]

Pretty cool results! Nice job on the beaters!

Andy

[PursuitSE]

Pretty cool results! Nice job on the beaters!

Thanks Andy !

[CrazyRidez]

Good work.Color X ftw

[Michael Stoops]

Excellent results on a couple of older, pretty neglected cars. It's a bit sad, really, that even the 2003 model year car looked so ragged since it's really not all that hard to keep a car looking good for a long, long time with a little work and knowledge.

[PursuitSE]

Excellent results on a couple of older, pretty neglected cars. It's a bit sad, really, that even the 2003 model year car looked so ragged since it's really not all that hard to keep a car looking good for a long, long time with a little work and knowledge.

Thanks Michael. I appreciate your comment.
The bad condition of the paint on the black 2003 may explain why my cousin paid only 800$ for it. Because it does not have that much millage for a 9 years old car (153000 km or about 95000 miles). And the interior, besides being very dirty, is not that much worned out. I hope that he now will take good care of it.

[aris]

Nice work