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1980 Corvette L82, 16,XXX miles, exterior paint correction
I was contacted by the owner this spring to detail this low mileage beauty and it was scheduled for my Premium exterior service (2-step correction). Upon inspection the paint appeared to be in good condition with moderate swirls and a few RIDS and the 2-step was able to achieve at least 95% correction. While the car has very low miles on it, it had been repainted at some point in its life…overall a very nice car though and the interior was mint…of course I forgot to take a pic.
Process:
Wash - ONR
Tires – Cleaned with Optimum Power Clean and dressed with Meguiar’s Hyper Dressing
Wheels - Sonax Full Effect, light polish with Optimum Metal Polish
Paint correction - M105 with a Surbuf pad on the GG6 followed by M205 with a crimson LC pad on the GG6. Bumper covers were done with Sonax Paint Cleaner and a 4” tangerine LC pad…(more about that below).
Glass - Meguiars D120
LSP – Blackfire Wet-Diamond
Before pics
Putting my new brushes to use
Swirls were a little hard to capture…
Lots of areas that had TOGW!
My initial test spot was with D300/MF, which worked well on the light swirls, but the paint was hard and a more aggressive method was needed for the deeper stuff, M105/Surbuf worked better and even finished down very well!
Single Stage paint…being a repaint I was expecting BC/CC.
The 50/50 shots were with D300/MF
This one was with M105/Surbuf…not the best shot as it was the top of the fender but you should be able to see it.
All sharp edges were taped up…Corvettes are notorious for sharp edges, and burning through them is very easy to do. There were actually several areas where the edges were already burned on this car (which were documented prior to correction) so I wanted to be sure I didn’t make things any worse. 3M fineline tape works great for these areas!
You can actually see the sharp raised edge here
Gas doors have very sharp edges too!
There are always going to be those cars or paints that come along which really pose a challenge or require some thinking to correct…well, this was definitely one of them! As I worked my way around the car M105/Surbuf was working amazingly well, right up to where I started on the rear bumper! The second I started hitting the bumpers, everything I tried dried up right away and it dulled the paint big time! See pic below
After trying about 6 different polishes (M105, D300, M205, M83, M80, and even M07), various pads, rotary, DA and hand, I began to be concerned. I gave my good buddy Kevin Brown (aka – Buff Daddy) a call to discuss some possibilities to the problem. Kevin suggested a few options and it was finally decided to try a few other polishes, possibly some which were water based. In the mean time I figured I’d get the rest of the car done first and worry about the bumpers last as I was pressed for time. While I was working my fellow detailing buddy Justin stopped by looking for some product samples. I showed him the issue I was having and he volunteered to help try some things out while I continued working on the rest of the car. He immediately asked if I had any Sonax Paint Cleaner on hand, having read Todd Cooperiders review on it recently, he thought that would be a good place to start. Of course I had some and he went to town applying it by hand first. Almost immediately we saw signs of improvement! Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one! Here is Justin helping me out… thanks for the free labor Justin!
I was contacted by the owner this spring to detail this low mileage beauty and it was scheduled for my Premium exterior service (2-step correction). Upon inspection the paint appeared to be in good condition with moderate swirls and a few RIDS and the 2-step was able to achieve at least 95% correction. While the car has very low miles on it, it had been repainted at some point in its life…overall a very nice car though and the interior was mint…of course I forgot to take a pic.
Process:
Wash - ONR
Tires – Cleaned with Optimum Power Clean and dressed with Meguiar’s Hyper Dressing
Wheels - Sonax Full Effect, light polish with Optimum Metal Polish
Paint correction - M105 with a Surbuf pad on the GG6 followed by M205 with a crimson LC pad on the GG6. Bumper covers were done with Sonax Paint Cleaner and a 4” tangerine LC pad…(more about that below).
Glass - Meguiars D120
LSP – Blackfire Wet-Diamond
Before pics
Putting my new brushes to use
Swirls were a little hard to capture…
Lots of areas that had TOGW!
My initial test spot was with D300/MF, which worked well on the light swirls, but the paint was hard and a more aggressive method was needed for the deeper stuff, M105/Surbuf worked better and even finished down very well!
Single Stage paint…being a repaint I was expecting BC/CC.
The 50/50 shots were with D300/MF
This one was with M105/Surbuf…not the best shot as it was the top of the fender but you should be able to see it.
All sharp edges were taped up…Corvettes are notorious for sharp edges, and burning through them is very easy to do. There were actually several areas where the edges were already burned on this car (which were documented prior to correction) so I wanted to be sure I didn’t make things any worse. 3M fineline tape works great for these areas!
You can actually see the sharp raised edge here
Gas doors have very sharp edges too!
There are always going to be those cars or paints that come along which really pose a challenge or require some thinking to correct…well, this was definitely one of them! As I worked my way around the car M105/Surbuf was working amazingly well, right up to where I started on the rear bumper! The second I started hitting the bumpers, everything I tried dried up right away and it dulled the paint big time! See pic below
After trying about 6 different polishes (M105, D300, M205, M83, M80, and even M07), various pads, rotary, DA and hand, I began to be concerned. I gave my good buddy Kevin Brown (aka – Buff Daddy) a call to discuss some possibilities to the problem. Kevin suggested a few options and it was finally decided to try a few other polishes, possibly some which were water based. In the mean time I figured I’d get the rest of the car done first and worry about the bumpers last as I was pressed for time. While I was working my fellow detailing buddy Justin stopped by looking for some product samples. I showed him the issue I was having and he volunteered to help try some things out while I continued working on the rest of the car. He immediately asked if I had any Sonax Paint Cleaner on hand, having read Todd Cooperiders review on it recently, he thought that would be a good place to start. Of course I had some and he went to town applying it by hand first. Almost immediately we saw signs of improvement! Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one! Here is Justin helping me out… thanks for the free labor Justin!
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