Tyler@HDR
New member
This was a treat to work on! A 1978 Corvette Pace car, with less than 700 original miles on the odometer.
With plastics still on the seats, it would be easy to assume the paintwork would be in relatively good shape, but unfortunately, this vehicle had seen many
improper wash methods used on it during its days, which left the paint not nearly where it should be for such a car.
The owner was not wanting to spend much money, but simply spruce it up - working at his location, the conditions were not most ideal, space was tight
and lighting was limited -- but it had to get done, so I made it work!
We opted for a light single-stage polish, to help work around the customers budget and expectations (not to mention the state of the original single-stage paint)
Tools & Equipment
As previously mentioned, the vehicle had seen better days. The single-stage paint was not only very soft, but also very, very thin. Some areas
so thin, in fact, that the fibreglass bodywork could be seen through. So extreme caution had to be taken during all procedures.
After a hand-wash and clay-bar process, polishing began.
Below you will see some process & final pictures. As the original paint was very soft, it meant trying various combinations of polishes, water mixtures, etc to be able to
leave the paint without any haze. You will see that 'testing' progress depicted in the pictures below:
Finally after getting the polishing dialled in, and resorting to water-based polishing on a B&S Euro Yellow foam pad, here were the end results.
With plastics still on the seats, it would be easy to assume the paintwork would be in relatively good shape, but unfortunately, this vehicle had seen many
improper wash methods used on it during its days, which left the paint not nearly where it should be for such a car.
The owner was not wanting to spend much money, but simply spruce it up - working at his location, the conditions were not most ideal, space was tight
and lighting was limited -- but it had to get done, so I made it work!
We opted for a light single-stage polish, to help work around the customers budget and expectations (not to mention the state of the original single-stage paint)
Tools & Equipment
- Rupes MKll 15
- Bigfood Nano iBrid
- Sonax 04/06
- CarPro Essence
- Water (straight water polishing)
- B&S Yellow Euro Foam
- CarPro Gloss Pad
- B&S Orange Cutting
- CarPro Eraser
- Swissvax Shield Wax
- Misc towels and tools
As previously mentioned, the vehicle had seen better days. The single-stage paint was not only very soft, but also very, very thin. Some areas
so thin, in fact, that the fibreglass bodywork could be seen through. So extreme caution had to be taken during all procedures.
After a hand-wash and clay-bar process, polishing began.
Below you will see some process & final pictures. As the original paint was very soft, it meant trying various combinations of polishes, water mixtures, etc to be able to
leave the paint without any haze. You will see that 'testing' progress depicted in the pictures below:
Finally after getting the polishing dialled in, and resorting to water-based polishing on a B&S Euro Yellow foam pad, here were the end results.
