Anzafin

The car:
Yesterday I polished my co-worker's Opel Astra wagon from the early 90's! The colour was burgundy, pretty much faded though...

The clearcoat:
This car is a true daily driver. A chainsaw in the trunk tells everything !
The paint was badly oxidized and faded, but surprisingly there wasn't very much deep scratches, only little dings here and there. It is a single stage paint btw.

Pads and polishes:
At first I thought it would take me a long time to get it decent, but actually it was a pretty straight forward job. I knew that Menzerna PO85RD 3.02 + Lake Country CCS orange pad can will finish very nicely when adding some water in the end and polish it until the 3.02 is almost completely gone. So, that was my choice . However, I wouldn't have seen much sense in a full two stage polish for this car anyway.

LSP:
To give some protection I put a layer of FK1000P on the surface.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The process:

1) Pre-wash
- Bilt-Hamber Autofoam

2) Wash
- Turtle Wax Big Orange
- Two bucket method + mf mitt

3) Claying
- Zaino Z-18
- Turtle Wax Big Orange as a lubricant

4) Polishing
- Menzerna PO85RD 3.02 + Lake Country CCS oranssi light cutting pad + FLEX PE14-2

5) LSP
- Finish Kare 1000P

6) Others
Tyres:
- Meguiar's Gold Class Endurance Tyre Gel

Windows:
- AutoGlym Fast Glass

Black plastic:
- AutoGlym Bumper Care

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Before anything







-----------------------------------------------------------------

The wash






-----------------------------------------------------------------

Preparing and polishing

So there wasn't a clearcoat on paint. The readings I got with the PD were something like this all around:







50/50:

Anzafin

50/50 on hood:


The front bumper before:


And after the AutoGlym Bumper Care. Sure it won't stay like this forever:


-----------------------------------------------------------------

After LSP









My all-around-detailing-cart :






-----------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for watching!

- Antti -

Milko75

Amazing transformation!

Opel´s value at least tripled

Anzafin

Thanks Milko!

rctmthouse

Antti,

May be you can give me some advices on this.

My sister just got a jet black '07 328. There were some rock chips on the hood and I guess the previous owner decided to use touch up paint but didn't do it correctly. Now there are some blobs of paint on the hood. Any advice on how to fix this? I read at several places that the only way is to wet sand the blob until it's even with the paint but I not comfortable wet sanding and my the only tool I have right now is the Griot with Meg 205 and some pads. Do have lots of over the counter products though but doubt any of those will help.

Thanks

Anzafin

Unfortunately wet sanding is the only way. No polish or compound can even them with the rest of the paint. There are excellent guides on www.detailingworld.co.uk about the issue.

- Antti -