Saved My Thirty Years Old Paint!!!

seedling

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
I have to credit "Dialtone76" on his post about fixing some minor imperfections that he had in his paint. As I was researching a way to fix mine. Albeit for a different reason!

You see, I just had a very weird scenario happen with my car. The car has always been garage kept, or covered if under carport, well, we had some flooding issues here a month or two ago. Imagine that in South Louisiana, right? <<We live half way between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.>> So I had to move the car to higher ground, but, couldn't drive it out because it slit a tire which is a whole other story since the 1.5 years old tire (in a new matching set of four) was no longer made in that size! Which is why the car had to sit at a friend's place out in the open under the cover.

Oddly enough I have treated this 28 years old cover to some updated waterproofing which may apparently caused my problem. In that, it sat in the rain and the sun for a week and a half, well, when I finally got two new tires (again long story but welcome Nitto Drag Radials)! But, the car was coated in this acid rain looking stuff on all of the flat surfaces! Very strange! Still I thought no big deal because I knew my paint has always looked pretty incredible for a 30 years old car with 90 some odd thousand miles on it, right?

Well, that was my second mistake. Because the first one was treating that cover and then leaving it on in all that all kinds of weather. The second was thinking that this would be an easy fix, which it was not! So after I clay barred the paint yesterday morning, I freaked out because I knew that I was in over my head. Which is how I came across your thread as I was researching a fix.

I wish that photos would have been able to show you the weird amoeba looking little imperfections that were all over it, but, they were of no help. So I called 2 of my buddies, one is a painter whose been painting cars for thirty years and the other an auto detailer who has been doing that for thirty years. Man does it ever pay to have friends in the know can I tell you!

The painter friend of mine told me anytime a "prepped car" (wrapped in plastic) gets wet that it cause issues with the paint even if there were none before. So that is point one as the cover which is a very nice thick dual sided cover made specifically for my car which had recently been re-waterproofed was the most likely culprit here.

The auto detailer friend of mine (who thought I was being overly dramatic). In that, he had helped me slick my car out when I first got it and no joke the paint looked like glass at the time. Therefore he just could not believe me, so much so that he had to see it for himself. So he comes over and he freaks out at what he sees. Because the car literally has a haze all over it. I can post pics if you like, but, you'll never be able to comprehend nor see what I was seeing! No Way!

Well, he decided that he would try a couple of products that he bought. Now keep in mind I've had the car back a few weeks now but was just now getting around to trying to fix this little disaster. So as we roll the cover back my buddy hones in on the cover (this is before I told him about what my painter friend had said). And he instantly notices the mold / green mildew spots on the inside of the cover.

Remember how I said the spots looked like little amoeba like shapes or what have you? Well, as it turns out the the car had some form of mold or bacteria settle into the paint attaching itself to it. So much so that it almost looked to be in the paint itself! Well, the products that he had with him made it better (some). He had a small harbor freight hand held low speed variable buffer and a few cutting agents with him. However, this thing needed more than that, much more.

So we head off to pick up some better stuff and some fine sand paper. After picking up some stuff at the detailer's supply store (which was technically closed but my buddy knows the guy so he let him in), the only other place open was OReilly's which is where we got the 2,000 and 3,000 fine grit sand paper.

FOR THE RECORD AND TO SAVE SPACE WITH EACH STEP BELOW WE SANDED/POLISHED, THEN WIPED CLEAN OR CLEAR WITH FRESH MICROFIBER TOWEL EACH OF THESE WERE DONE IN VERY SMALL SECTIONS CONTROLLING THE CHAOS (blue painters tape is your friend here on body lines and remember to say at least 2 fingers width away from any surface edges too):
We came back and hit it with the 3,000 grit and it was working, not super fast, but, still we were on our way. So we ended up using 3,000 grit all over the flat surfaces and we used some super concentrated wheel acid (which we diluted slightly) on the areas that were hard to reach. Such as behind and right around the power bulge with diluted wheel acid. This was a simple wipe enough on to saturate the area with a microfiber towel just damp enough in solution to wet the area you want to cover. More is not better here! This stuff worked like a charm!

STEP 1
In a nut shell, we very lightly rolled over the whole flat surface area with a 3,000 grit small round sanding disk from OReilly's. Then to smooth out the sanded surfaces and prep them for polish we treated them to another lower buffer wheel with sort of a wool pad with a product called "Pristine Finishes - PURE CUT" which is a professional high performance paint leveling compound (cutting agent). The bottle says that it is designed to remove 1000 grit or finer sanding scratches. So it worked great for step 1 as the car already had it's shine and luster back and the paint looked deep! Real deep! You should be able to get this at any detail supply store, if you can't find it I'll find what is available commercially or you can Message me and I can give you this guy's number if that's alright with moderators (not campaigning for this guy just wanting to make sure everyone can enjoy the same awesome results that I have)!

STEP 2
After that we went to step two which is the foam polishing application and we used a 3M product here (3M is by far the best product company out there for any paint type stuff in my opinion) - not that I am a professional mind you. However, my buddy is and he uses "3M Protect-It II" which is "Product 05996" for those of you who want to go to an auto paint store and pick some up? Or you can order it online now I think, but, this stuff is not cheap! In that, you will pay like $40 to $50 some bones a quart for the stuff. But man is it ever worth it! Again not plugging anyone, just saying this is the stuff that I used so I know first hand that it works! And this stuff works amazing on Black Cars! So to me this is a must have for a GN owner! That and good old Meguiars #7 - awesome glaze for making black cars black, but, I am getting ahead of myself here!

STEP 3
The final step in this process is to put a real shine on the car. I haven't finished mine yet, but, my paint already looks knee deep! However, I will post up some photos to show everyone the end product on my thirty years old paint job (that has 90 some odd thousand miles on it too mind you)! Now you can high speed the car at this point with what is known as a "Waffle Pad" which will really make your car shine or gleem like no tomorrow. However, my car is already shining like a new penny, so I don't feel as though it needs much more. You could use some of the high end Meguiars Waxes or what have you here. However, I will get you the name of the stuff that I use when I post pics up on this thing.

I would post photos of what it looked like, however, I don't know that you could even see what I saw. As it sort of hazed the whole car!

ITEMS REQUIRED:
Variable Low Speed Buffer
3,000 grit sanding discs
Wool pad
Micro fiber pad
Foam pad
Cutting Agent of some sort
Polishing Agent
Final Wax / Sealant / Protectant


Work it all in for awesome results!! Pics to come!!
 
Glad you were able to get it corrected. Just about everyone here can relate to that feeling you get when you do something to f'up your paint. If your paint was truly all original, just remember one thing going forward. The correction steps you had to take resulted in the removal of a lot of remaining paint thickness in the affected areas. This is important to know because the factory paint was notoriously paper thin to begin with. Anyone with paint experience can see that off the bat. Any respectable Detailer that does it for a living will have a paint thickness gauge on hand. Use it the next time before you attempt anymore correction or you will hit primer eventually and that feeling will be back, only this time nothing but a new paint job will fix it :D
 
Glad you were able to get it corrected. Just about everyone here can relate to that feeling you get when you do something to f'up your paint. If your paint was truly all original, just remember one thing going forward. The correction steps you had to take resulted in the removal of a lot of remaining paint thickness in the affected areas. This is important to know because the factory paint was notoriously paper thin to begin with. Anyone with paint experience can see that off the bat. Any respectable Detailer that does it for a living will have a paint thickness gauge on hand. Use it the next time before you attempt anymore correction or you will hit primer eventually and that feeling will be back, only this time nothing but a new paint job will fix it :D

Yes my paint is still factory original (aside from boo boo that was inflicted by a fox mustang at 120 mph that was fixed long ago). So yes sir, you are 100% correct and clearly I should have mentioned that as well. Because that was mentioned to me, however, he didn't have a paint gauge on him at the time. And i definitely took a chance there for sure! However, to be honest it was so bad that I knew that if we couldn't save it that I would have had no choice but to paint the car!! So yes I lucked out!

However, after having the car the way it was before all this time, there was no way I was taking a step backwards. So I made the decision to move forward regardless because I knew it had to be done no matter what!

Thanks!
 
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