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The subject: a very original Saab 900 with 68000 miles. We (me and Eric, the owner and fellow detailer on this job) think this car has spent most of its life outdoors; still, it is very solid. I drove it for about 15 minutes, and it has no more squeaks and rattles than my '05 Subaru. the car is tight. The exhaust is original and still complete. Eric shined a light down into the fenders and there is no corrosion at all.
But the paint; oooooooh. Red single stage. It looked and felt like red sandpaper. It was all swirls and acid rain pits. Our prognosis was poor. We felt that the best we could do was remove oxidation and protect what was left. A fingernail would catch in the swirls. I believed that removing enough paint to remove the swirls might also mean thinning it too much.
We started with clay, and after claying the car our sights were raised considerably. The clay pulled a lot of the roughness from the surface. What we thought was our fingernails catching on scratches was our fingernails catching on embedded contaminants! This is the first time I've ever used an entire clay bar on one car! Here is the clay after the SECOND pass: after the first pass, it needed to be discarded.
I started with a W7000 pad and #84 with the Makita set on about 1000 rpm. Eric started with a W4006 (wool) pad and #85 and his Porter Cable 7428 (rotary) set on about 1500. It quickly became clear that the pads were too aggressive, and we switched to W8006 pads and I upped my speed a bit, and Eric dropped his. 1200rpm with the W8006 and #84 gave us a nice hologram-free finish. We finished up using clean W8006 pads on the PC7424 (G-100) with #80 Speed Glaze. After lunch we applied #21 Synthetic Sealant using the PC/G-100 and W9006 pads; this may have been the first time this car has been waxed this century. I do think that this car came out much better than either of us thought possible....
Edit: I had the car as an '88, it is an '86....
Tom
But the paint; oooooooh. Red single stage. It looked and felt like red sandpaper. It was all swirls and acid rain pits. Our prognosis was poor. We felt that the best we could do was remove oxidation and protect what was left. A fingernail would catch in the swirls. I believed that removing enough paint to remove the swirls might also mean thinning it too much.
We started with clay, and after claying the car our sights were raised considerably. The clay pulled a lot of the roughness from the surface. What we thought was our fingernails catching on scratches was our fingernails catching on embedded contaminants! This is the first time I've ever used an entire clay bar on one car! Here is the clay after the SECOND pass: after the first pass, it needed to be discarded.
I started with a W7000 pad and #84 with the Makita set on about 1000 rpm. Eric started with a W4006 (wool) pad and #85 and his Porter Cable 7428 (rotary) set on about 1500. It quickly became clear that the pads were too aggressive, and we switched to W8006 pads and I upped my speed a bit, and Eric dropped his. 1200rpm with the W8006 and #84 gave us a nice hologram-free finish. We finished up using clean W8006 pads on the PC7424 (G-100) with #80 Speed Glaze. After lunch we applied #21 Synthetic Sealant using the PC/G-100 and W9006 pads; this may have been the first time this car has been waxed this century. I do think that this car came out much better than either of us thought possible....
Edit: I had the car as an '88, it is an '86....
Tom
Very nice work!!!
Heh heh, that took some guts to try wool and cutting pads on such old single stage for the first pass 
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