After admiring the newly chromed trim in I’ll Be Chrome For Christmas it was time to get back to the paint job mentioned in Back in Black!
As the old observation notes, the light at the end of the tunnel is probably an oncoming train.
The first order of business was to tackle the orange peel, dirt nibs, and other imperfections in the paint with 1500 grit sanding disks on an orbital sander using the highly rated 3M Hookit Purple Finishing Film Abrasive Disc which is designed for clear coat. I was going through these disks a lot faster than expected when I noticed that they are intended to be used damp, not dry. OK, that made a BIG difference in both how they worked as well as how long they lasted.
The bad news is that sanding turned the shiny paint job into a dull matte finish. The good news is that you could watch the orange peel disappear into a smooth surface and the dirt nibs vanish. This actually made a difference!
Of course it took forever. Going over the entire car took over a week. Admittedly this was half days, as my arms and shoulders aren’t what they used to be. Still, it was a long time spent on tedious manual labor with the ongoing threat of a moments inattention creating a huge mess. And this was only the first of six steps.
The bulk of the work was with a six inch DA sander. This works great for most of the car, but there are a lot of small and curved areas that had to be done by hand. Which also takes forever and is even more exhausting than using the power sander. After a few days of this I ordered a smaller DA sander that uses three inch, two inch, and one inch sanding disks. This smaller sander should be able to do both sanding and polishing.
After finishing with the 1500 grit it was time to move on to the 2000 grit. The original pass with 1500 grit does almost all the work for smoothing the surface – each subsequent pass basically removes the progressively smaller sanding scratches from the previous pass. At least that is the theory…
It turns out that the theory is correct! The pass with 2000 grit did go faster. And you could start to see some sheen in the finish. Encouraging!
The next pass was with 3000 grit. Which, if anything, went even faster than the 2000 grit. You could start to see how it is going to look. Maybe this is actually going to work!
At this point the bulk of the car was ready for polish. I needed the small DA sander and sanding disks to finish up the sanding stage – and these were still on order. I had to wait a bit longer to see how the paint would look after polishing.
I couldn’t stand it! I had to see if this was actually going to work! Out came the new DA Polisher, foam pads, and 3M polishing compounds.
I’ve been starting each step with the roof of the car, on the theory that the roof is generally less visible than the hood, trunk, and sides of the car. Once again climb up on the bench and start working from the middle of the roof out. Immediately notice two things: First, the middle of the roof is still almost too far to reach. Have I mentioned how big the Imperial is? Second, the electric DA polisher is much larger and heavier than the air-powered DA sander. And the polisher requires two hands, unlike the one-handed operation of the sander. My entire body is not going to be happy about this…
Polish up the first area with coarse polishing compound, wipe off the residue, and take a look. Wow, what a difference! A smooth surface that looks great and is showing substantial depth. This is encouraging. A bit of haze, but that is what the finer grades of polish are for. Finish off the rest of the roof with coarse compound and then start again with the medium compound.
Now we are getting somewhere! It is looking really good – smooth, clean, good shine, excellent depth. I ran out of time before getting to the final pass with the fine compound but it looks like I’m getting the finish I wanted.
There is still a lot of work to do but I’m really encouraged at the moment. Hopefully this light is actually the end of the tunnel and not a train!