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Our first TNOG of 2016, and the first under the direction of our new MOL Admin, Nick Winn...... and Nick was called away to a training program in Oklahoma so yours truly had to step in for him! Looking forward to having Nick facilitate these events!!
We had an interesting project in the garage last night - a year old, 50th Anniversary Mustang GT with a mere 6000 miles on the clock. But, and this is a big but, the car sits outside all the time and the owner lives in the little ocean side town of Seal Beach so exposure to sun and salt air is very high. Amazingly, the paint was in remarkably good condition, except for a smattering of bird drop etchings on the hood. We joked that the car had been attacked by an '80s New Wave Band... ie, a Flock of Seagulls had left it's mark on this car!
Anyway....
The first order of business was to wash the car with D114 Rinse Free Express Wash. As we transferred loose contaminants from the paint surface to the towels, we stacked the dirty towels on a Grit Guard sitting on the floor. When the paint was clean, we'd grab a "dirty" towel, wring it out, and use one of the clean sides to clean the glass (remember, we recommend only using 4 of the 8 sides of a folded towel for washing as you lose too much of the D114 solution if you go further than that).
Once the car was clean, it was time to clay... and boy, did this car need claying!
Talk about team work!
Once cleaned and clayed, we located all those etch marks and got to work on them. Our first course of action was something not terribly aggressive, but that is known to add noticeable clarity to even very new paint in otherwise great condition - M205 on a microfiber disc. While it did indeed add some clarity and gloss to the surface, it wasn't quite up to the task of removing the bird droppings. This paint proved to be remarkably hard, especially for Ford paint!
We stepped up to M100 on a microfiber cutting disc and, while that was starting to make some headway against the etch marks, the paint was heating up very rapidly and spiking to a surface temperature that was uncomfortable to the touch. That's not a good thing with modern paint. While we could have continued to just hammer away with the MT300, M100 and a microfiber pad, we felt the risk of "destructive paint repair" was too high so we decided to spot wet sand with 2500 grit instead. Below you can see the various areas that were wet sanded, by hand, to address these issues.
Sanding marks were removed in a matter of seconds with M100 and a microfiber cutting pad, and since removal was so fast we introduced hardly any heat to the paint at all. Sanding mark removal was so fast, in fact, that several in attendance were almost stunned by the speed. Wet sanding may sound really invasive, but when done correctly, in the right situation, it can actually be far less invasive to the paint than just hammering away with a compound and aggressive pad. This was definitely one of those cases.
Here's an example of one of the etch marks.
Here you have to look really close to find it, but there is still the tiniest trace of it.
Voila - it's totally gone now and the paint integrity remains intact.
Alan then proceeded to finish buffing out the hood.
A real tight zoom in on the worst (ie, the deepest) of the etch marks after sanding and polishing. This was the only mark that remained, but it was so deep that discretion told us to stop. If you have look this hard, under the just the right lighting and just the angles, to find the defect on a daily driver, it's best to just live with it sometimes.
Puddle lights from the side mirrors of the Mustang.
Another interesting little project, and really just an experiment to see if anything at all could be done to salvage this plastic rear window of a BMW 3 Series convertible. It's about as transparent as the walls of a medieval dungeon!
A little M17 Clear Plastic Cleaner on a 4" pad via MT300. Nope. (But we really didn't think it would do the job, given the sorry state of this window!)
M101 on a burgundy cutting pad. Apparently someone in the dungeon heard the noise and wanted to help. Hey, you do need to support the back side of a plastic convertible top window when attempting to restore it, and this worked great! But alas, even M101 and a cutting pad on the MT300 did virtually nothing to improve the condition of the window.
One last experiment, but given what we'd already done, we knew the harsh reality here: some things simply can not be restored and must be replaced instead. This is M317 Unigrit Sand & Clean on a 3M grey Scotch Brite pad. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Nothing. No escaping the dungeon tonight. What this window needs is a razor blade to cut it out, and then an industrial needle and thread to sew in a new one. But since the top itself is basically shot, too, it's just time to bite the bullet, dip deep into the wallet, and replace the whole thing. Still, a fun experiment to see if anything could help something this far gone. I still say we should have tried sanding as we had, quite literally, nothing to lose. In reality, however, it's doubtful that even that would have worked.... plus we would have ended up with sanding marks to buff out. And we'd still be there now, working on this lost cause!!!
We had an interesting project in the garage last night - a year old, 50th Anniversary Mustang GT with a mere 6000 miles on the clock. But, and this is a big but, the car sits outside all the time and the owner lives in the little ocean side town of Seal Beach so exposure to sun and salt air is very high. Amazingly, the paint was in remarkably good condition, except for a smattering of bird drop etchings on the hood. We joked that the car had been attacked by an '80s New Wave Band... ie, a Flock of Seagulls had left it's mark on this car!
Anyway....
The first order of business was to wash the car with D114 Rinse Free Express Wash. As we transferred loose contaminants from the paint surface to the towels, we stacked the dirty towels on a Grit Guard sitting on the floor. When the paint was clean, we'd grab a "dirty" towel, wring it out, and use one of the clean sides to clean the glass (remember, we recommend only using 4 of the 8 sides of a folded towel for washing as you lose too much of the D114 solution if you go further than that).
Once the car was clean, it was time to clay... and boy, did this car need claying!
Talk about team work!
Once cleaned and clayed, we located all those etch marks and got to work on them. Our first course of action was something not terribly aggressive, but that is known to add noticeable clarity to even very new paint in otherwise great condition - M205 on a microfiber disc. While it did indeed add some clarity and gloss to the surface, it wasn't quite up to the task of removing the bird droppings. This paint proved to be remarkably hard, especially for Ford paint!
We stepped up to M100 on a microfiber cutting disc and, while that was starting to make some headway against the etch marks, the paint was heating up very rapidly and spiking to a surface temperature that was uncomfortable to the touch. That's not a good thing with modern paint. While we could have continued to just hammer away with the MT300, M100 and a microfiber pad, we felt the risk of "destructive paint repair" was too high so we decided to spot wet sand with 2500 grit instead. Below you can see the various areas that were wet sanded, by hand, to address these issues.
Sanding marks were removed in a matter of seconds with M100 and a microfiber cutting pad, and since removal was so fast we introduced hardly any heat to the paint at all. Sanding mark removal was so fast, in fact, that several in attendance were almost stunned by the speed. Wet sanding may sound really invasive, but when done correctly, in the right situation, it can actually be far less invasive to the paint than just hammering away with a compound and aggressive pad. This was definitely one of those cases.
Here's an example of one of the etch marks.
Here you have to look really close to find it, but there is still the tiniest trace of it.
Voila - it's totally gone now and the paint integrity remains intact.
Alan then proceeded to finish buffing out the hood.
A real tight zoom in on the worst (ie, the deepest) of the etch marks after sanding and polishing. This was the only mark that remained, but it was so deep that discretion told us to stop. If you have look this hard, under the just the right lighting and just the angles, to find the defect on a daily driver, it's best to just live with it sometimes.
Puddle lights from the side mirrors of the Mustang.
Another interesting little project, and really just an experiment to see if anything at all could be done to salvage this plastic rear window of a BMW 3 Series convertible. It's about as transparent as the walls of a medieval dungeon!
A little M17 Clear Plastic Cleaner on a 4" pad via MT300. Nope. (But we really didn't think it would do the job, given the sorry state of this window!)
M101 on a burgundy cutting pad. Apparently someone in the dungeon heard the noise and wanted to help. Hey, you do need to support the back side of a plastic convertible top window when attempting to restore it, and this worked great! But alas, even M101 and a cutting pad on the MT300 did virtually nothing to improve the condition of the window.
One last experiment, but given what we'd already done, we knew the harsh reality here: some things simply can not be restored and must be replaced instead. This is M317 Unigrit Sand & Clean on a 3M grey Scotch Brite pad. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Nothing. No escaping the dungeon tonight. What this window needs is a razor blade to cut it out, and then an industrial needle and thread to sew in a new one. But since the top itself is basically shot, too, it's just time to bite the bullet, dip deep into the wallet, and replace the whole thing. Still, a fun experiment to see if anything could help something this far gone. I still say we should have tried sanding as we had, quite literally, nothing to lose. In reality, however, it's doubtful that even that would have worked.... plus we would have ended up with sanding marks to buff out. And we'd still be there now, working on this lost cause!!!