Meguiar's had the opportunity to do a sort of "freshen up" detail on this sweet 1965 Mustang Fastback, built by our friend's at Rebuilding Generations. Rebuilding Generations is a group out of Idaho which brings youth together with adults to works on cars & learn from each other. This car was actually built by kids ranging from ages 7 - 20 years old! The car was built for a war veteran who lives in Orange County. Kevin at Rebuilding Generations called us up and asked if we would freshen it up before it was delivered. We checked our calendar & said of course!

The car was clean enough to were it did not need to be washed, so we started with our Quik Detailer Mist & Wipe to remove the light dust on the vehicle so we could have a clean working surface.

Next we taped off certain areas of the trim.

We then clayed the vehicle with our Smooth Surface Clay Kit to ensure any above surface contaminants were removed. The car wasn't too bad, it has a mild amount of contaminants likely just from dust sitting on the surface for extended periods of time.

Santiago Gonzaga, a regular at our Thursday Night Open Garage classes, volunteered his time and came by for a few hours to assist on the project.

Upon inspection, the overall condition of most of the panels was not too bad, with the exception of about 5-6 areas on the car which still had some sanding marks left behind. We also had an panel which had a "dry spray defect" of paint which needed to be addressed. Yes this car was sanded & buffed by kids, so it was not completely perfect & our goal was not necessarily to make it perfect either.
Here are some shots of the various sanding marks left behind as well as other defects we were presented with.



For the majority of the car which only had light swirls marks, I tested out our M205 Ultra Finishing Polish on our MT300 DA Polisher, using our DFP5 5 Inch Soft Buff Yellow Foam Polishing Pad. 4800 OPMS, about shoulder width working area, moderate pressure, and moderate arm speed, & with about 4 -5 sections passes per area, removed the light shallow swirls marks, & brought up a high gloss.

Santiago started working with this set up on the rest of the car.

While Santiago was running M205, Markus Kleis and I sort of teamed up and did some spot repair to a variety of scratches & sanding marks on the car. Here Markus is running our M101 Foam Cutting Compound, on our 4 inch foam cutting disc, on a Flex Rotary.


Mike Pennington was determined to get these wheels looking great, since it had looked like they had not been polished for a quite a long time. More on that later.

Mike Stoops used some of our M101 Foam Cut Compound by hand to remove some sanding marks on an area of the hood we could not fit a machine into.

In the below picture is the "dry spray" we were referring to. A dry spray has almost an above surface rough, sandpaper like feel & texture to it. If you look at the below picture from right to left, you will notice the area towards the left of the panel where the texture & reflection looks completely different from the rest of the panel. This is the defect we are referring to. An automotive dry spray paint defect can be caused by variety of reasons including the paint spray gun being too far away from the panel or too high of air pressure being used, to name a couple.

Here is another picture of the dry spray defect.

We used our Meguiar's Unigrit 3 inch 3000 Grit Foam Finishing Disc to attempt to remove the dry spray defect.

After we sanded with 3000 grit, we noticed we were working with a panel which had been blended. For more information on blend panels, look on-line for "automotive paint blending." The blend technique used on this panel was not necessarily perfect, but we were able to remove the dry spray, and make the paint finish in this area much better.

We then again used our M101 Foam Cut Compound to remove the sanding marks.

I followed Markus with M105 on a DMC5 5 Inch Foam Cutting Disc with our MT300 for the larger portion of the panel.

And after! Got to love when your work area looks like the below pictures just after the compounding step! Big improvement.


Onto another area which needed some love from our 3000 grit.


And another blend panel. Again not perfect, but we were able to take the finish to a much higher level. (Unfortunately forgot to get after pictures of this area. It's not easy to document ever single step while working to detail a car under a time crunch of about 7 hours!)

The wheel design prevented up from getting good access to clean & polish barrels of the wheels, so we ended up taking the wheels off, and cleaned & polished all the wheels with the help of Derek Bemiss from Detail Werks.
.
Derek using our new Hot Rims Metal Polish to clean up the inside of the wheels.

After the sanding marks were removed with a combination of our M105 Ultra Cut Compound & M101 Foam Cut Compound, & the whole car was polished with our M205 Ultra Finishing Polish, we applied a coat of our M21 Synthetic Sealant 2.0.

After a coat of M21, we did some final touches to the car. Here we cleaned up the rubber trim with our #40 Vinyl & Rubber Cleaner/Conditioner.

We also dry brushed & vacuumed the carpet, and then used our G13616 Quik Interior Detailer Cleaner on the interior surfaces.

D120 Glass Cleaner Concentrate inside & out

And before we knew it, we were finished and it was time to roll the car outside to try to capture some sun shots on a cloudy day in so cal.
M105 & M101/M205/M21





Thanks again to everyone which helped & great job to Rebuilding Generations crew of kids on this build! Congrats to the new owner & thank you for your service.
The car was clean enough to were it did not need to be washed, so we started with our Quik Detailer Mist & Wipe to remove the light dust on the vehicle so we could have a clean working surface.
Next we taped off certain areas of the trim.
We then clayed the vehicle with our Smooth Surface Clay Kit to ensure any above surface contaminants were removed. The car wasn't too bad, it has a mild amount of contaminants likely just from dust sitting on the surface for extended periods of time.
Santiago Gonzaga, a regular at our Thursday Night Open Garage classes, volunteered his time and came by for a few hours to assist on the project.
Upon inspection, the overall condition of most of the panels was not too bad, with the exception of about 5-6 areas on the car which still had some sanding marks left behind. We also had an panel which had a "dry spray defect" of paint which needed to be addressed. Yes this car was sanded & buffed by kids, so it was not completely perfect & our goal was not necessarily to make it perfect either.
Here are some shots of the various sanding marks left behind as well as other defects we were presented with.
For the majority of the car which only had light swirls marks, I tested out our M205 Ultra Finishing Polish on our MT300 DA Polisher, using our DFP5 5 Inch Soft Buff Yellow Foam Polishing Pad. 4800 OPMS, about shoulder width working area, moderate pressure, and moderate arm speed, & with about 4 -5 sections passes per area, removed the light shallow swirls marks, & brought up a high gloss.
Santiago started working with this set up on the rest of the car.
While Santiago was running M205, Markus Kleis and I sort of teamed up and did some spot repair to a variety of scratches & sanding marks on the car. Here Markus is running our M101 Foam Cutting Compound, on our 4 inch foam cutting disc, on a Flex Rotary.
Mike Pennington was determined to get these wheels looking great, since it had looked like they had not been polished for a quite a long time. More on that later.
Mike Stoops used some of our M101 Foam Cut Compound by hand to remove some sanding marks on an area of the hood we could not fit a machine into.
In the below picture is the "dry spray" we were referring to. A dry spray has almost an above surface rough, sandpaper like feel & texture to it. If you look at the below picture from right to left, you will notice the area towards the left of the panel where the texture & reflection looks completely different from the rest of the panel. This is the defect we are referring to. An automotive dry spray paint defect can be caused by variety of reasons including the paint spray gun being too far away from the panel or too high of air pressure being used, to name a couple.
Here is another picture of the dry spray defect.
We used our Meguiar's Unigrit 3 inch 3000 Grit Foam Finishing Disc to attempt to remove the dry spray defect.
After we sanded with 3000 grit, we noticed we were working with a panel which had been blended. For more information on blend panels, look on-line for "automotive paint blending." The blend technique used on this panel was not necessarily perfect, but we were able to remove the dry spray, and make the paint finish in this area much better.
We then again used our M101 Foam Cut Compound to remove the sanding marks.
I followed Markus with M105 on a DMC5 5 Inch Foam Cutting Disc with our MT300 for the larger portion of the panel.
And after! Got to love when your work area looks like the below pictures just after the compounding step! Big improvement.
Onto another area which needed some love from our 3000 grit.
And another blend panel. Again not perfect, but we were able to take the finish to a much higher level. (Unfortunately forgot to get after pictures of this area. It's not easy to document ever single step while working to detail a car under a time crunch of about 7 hours!)
The wheel design prevented up from getting good access to clean & polish barrels of the wheels, so we ended up taking the wheels off, and cleaned & polished all the wheels with the help of Derek Bemiss from Detail Werks.
Derek using our new Hot Rims Metal Polish to clean up the inside of the wheels.
After the sanding marks were removed with a combination of our M105 Ultra Cut Compound & M101 Foam Cut Compound, & the whole car was polished with our M205 Ultra Finishing Polish, we applied a coat of our M21 Synthetic Sealant 2.0.
After a coat of M21, we did some final touches to the car. Here we cleaned up the rubber trim with our #40 Vinyl & Rubber Cleaner/Conditioner.
We also dry brushed & vacuumed the carpet, and then used our G13616 Quik Interior Detailer Cleaner on the interior surfaces.
D120 Glass Cleaner Concentrate inside & out
And before we knew it, we were finished and it was time to roll the car outside to try to capture some sun shots on a cloudy day in so cal.
M105 & M101/M205/M21
Thanks again to everyone which helped & great job to Rebuilding Generations crew of kids on this build! Congrats to the new owner & thank you for your service.
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