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Every now and then we get a chance to work on something really cool. Sometimes though, these projects come up with little or no warning. Such was the case over the weekend when a customer showed up to Superformance in Irvine, CA a week early to pick up his new Superformance Shelby Cobra replica. The paint on these cars is quite finicky and the guys at Superformance were struggling to get this one prepped in a hurry.
These cars are built in South Africa and shipped to the USA without engine and gearbox, but otherwise they are complete. Most of the engines that get dropped into these cars, and the Shelby Daytona Coupes and GT40 replicas, are from Roush. Superformance builds these cars not only under license from Carroll Shelby but they also build the official Shelby Cobra "continuation" cars - those vehicles sold with official Shelby VINs.
So not only did we get to work on a pretty cool car, but in a very cool setting!
The black car with silver stripes was our project for the day. She doesn't look too bad from here, but from up close it was a different story.
This is one of the Daytona Coupes, also know as the Brock Coupe for designer Pete Brock who penned the original back in the '60s for Carroll Shelby.
Here's a nice little lounge area in the garage, complete with big screen TV and.... hey, what's that on the table against the wall?
Why, it's a selection of fine wines from Carroll Shelby's own winery!
But we weren't here to play with amazing cars or drink fine wine - we had swirls to eradicate. And scratches to remove. And paint that was just hazy in general.
Not a lot of shots during the process as we were in a huge hurry, plus the owner was talking pretty much non stop - talk about an excited guy!! - but we can share this:
But everything fell into place with M105, W8207 Soft Buff 2.0 Polishing Pad, rotary, 1500 rpm. Apparently this paint was highly sensitive to pad material and speed. It liked some speed. Even when we applied M205 on the G110 with a finishing pad, it still liked speed, so we ran the G110 at 5 to work the M205. Surprisingly, for as sensitive as the paint was and as easily marred as it was, the M105/W8207/Rotary left almost no holograms. Oh, there were some, but they were few and far between and nothing the M205/W9207/G110 couldn't handle.
So on we went with that process. Routine cleaning of the foam pad was an absolute must with this project. After just a single panel the M105 would start to load up a bit on the pad and we'd get quite a bit of dust and gumming of the product on the finish. But a simple nylon brush cleaning of the pad after every other section really made the going much, much easier. Dust was reduced to almost nothing, gumming was totally gone, and wipe off was a snap. You simply can not clean your pads, even the foam one, too often when working with a rotary buffer. Cleanliness is critical. Even with all the cleaning, we still used multiple pads for this one small car.
Final step was a nice thin application of M20 Polymer Sealant, applied with a fresh W9207 finishing pad via G110 at speed 3 and worked several times against the paint with light pressure. It dried very quickly and wipe off was just ridiculously simple. The car owner was stunned at the lack of effort required to remove the M20!!
Here's how the snake looked when we finished, 7 hours after we started:
The specs you see are from dust fallout in the shop a good 20 minutes after we finished buffing. Not dust from any product used, just the typical dust they get in this facility. Maddening!!
The light in the center is from a Brinkman Xenon (AKA "swirlfinder") light.
These cars are built in South Africa and shipped to the USA without engine and gearbox, but otherwise they are complete. Most of the engines that get dropped into these cars, and the Shelby Daytona Coupes and GT40 replicas, are from Roush. Superformance builds these cars not only under license from Carroll Shelby but they also build the official Shelby Cobra "continuation" cars - those vehicles sold with official Shelby VINs.
So not only did we get to work on a pretty cool car, but in a very cool setting!
The black car with silver stripes was our project for the day. She doesn't look too bad from here, but from up close it was a different story.
This is one of the Daytona Coupes, also know as the Brock Coupe for designer Pete Brock who penned the original back in the '60s for Carroll Shelby.
Here's a nice little lounge area in the garage, complete with big screen TV and.... hey, what's that on the table against the wall?
Why, it's a selection of fine wines from Carroll Shelby's own winery!
But we weren't here to play with amazing cars or drink fine wine - we had swirls to eradicate. And scratches to remove. And paint that was just hazy in general.
Not a lot of shots during the process as we were in a huge hurry, plus the owner was talking pretty much non stop - talk about an excited guy!! - but we can share this:
- M105 with a W8207 pad on a G110 would take out most of the swirls but haze the paint pretty badly.
- M205 with a W8207 pad on a G110 wouldn't take out many swirls at all, but would still haze the paint, and pretty badly at that
- D151 PRC - same thing
- Ultimate Compound - same thing
- SwirlX - same thing
- Hand applied M105 with a yellow foam wax applicator hazed the paint horribly
- M105 with a WWLC7 Yellow Light Wool Cutting Pad from the So1o System on a rotary returned a horrific amount of swirls - far worse than anything shown in the pictures above. We are talking SCARY.
- Trying to follow any of these with M205 on a W9207 finishing pad would help somewhat, but not anywhere near what we wanted
But everything fell into place with M105, W8207 Soft Buff 2.0 Polishing Pad, rotary, 1500 rpm. Apparently this paint was highly sensitive to pad material and speed. It liked some speed. Even when we applied M205 on the G110 with a finishing pad, it still liked speed, so we ran the G110 at 5 to work the M205. Surprisingly, for as sensitive as the paint was and as easily marred as it was, the M105/W8207/Rotary left almost no holograms. Oh, there were some, but they were few and far between and nothing the M205/W9207/G110 couldn't handle.
So on we went with that process. Routine cleaning of the foam pad was an absolute must with this project. After just a single panel the M105 would start to load up a bit on the pad and we'd get quite a bit of dust and gumming of the product on the finish. But a simple nylon brush cleaning of the pad after every other section really made the going much, much easier. Dust was reduced to almost nothing, gumming was totally gone, and wipe off was a snap. You simply can not clean your pads, even the foam one, too often when working with a rotary buffer. Cleanliness is critical. Even with all the cleaning, we still used multiple pads for this one small car.
Final step was a nice thin application of M20 Polymer Sealant, applied with a fresh W9207 finishing pad via G110 at speed 3 and worked several times against the paint with light pressure. It dried very quickly and wipe off was just ridiculously simple. The car owner was stunned at the lack of effort required to remove the M20!!
Here's how the snake looked when we finished, 7 hours after we started:
The specs you see are from dust fallout in the shop a good 20 minutes after we finished buffing. Not dust from any product used, just the typical dust they get in this facility. Maddening!!
The light in the center is from a Brinkman Xenon (AKA "swirlfinder") light.
for a while before dialing in the combo. Car turned out amazing.
.
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