Black Viper Before & After - Open Invitation

[Mike Phillips]

Black Viper Before & After - Open Invitation

Starting tomorrow at 5:00pm, I will be doing a Complete Buff-Out on a black 1995 RT10 Viper for the upcoming Viper Detail Day at Meguiar’s



If anyone would like to come down and watch and learn, and even help out, respond to this thread so that I know who’s coming.

Meguiar’s address for Mapquest Driving Directions
Meguiar’s Inc
17991 Mitchell South
Irvine, CA 92614

The detail work will probably go late into the night as stopping to take pictures slows the process down. This project will then be posted to the Extreme Makeovers forum.

Mike

[Newport Viper]

I'm in.
Let me know if you want me to pick you up dinner.
David
949-306-4240

[Mike Phillips]

Hi David,

Thanks for the offer, I'll probably just save some lunch for later...

See you there!

Mike

[Mike Phillips]

Viper Before & After Update

The Viper buff-out scheduled for tonight is going along as planned. Just a little while ago I finished washing the entire car and then taking some before photo's to capture the current condition of the finish.

Here's the best I could get with the sun where it was at in the sky. The below photo shows both cobweb-effect and rotary buffer instilled swirls.




Here's one of the upper portion of the door, note the swirl pattern,



More to come…

Mike

[gbackus]

Still doing it?

Is this going to continue tommorrow?(the 8th) or are you done with the car? I'd really like to see your work first hand, and I'm not too far. If you are continuing tommorrow, what time are you going to be doing it?

[Mike Phillips]

After washing the Viper and pulling it into the Meguiar's Garage, the artificial lights revealed something wrong with the paint that wasn't as noticeable under natural light.

Let this be an example as to why it's important to inspect your car's finish under different lighting conditions.

The passenger side of the hood was dull and mottled looking. Here's a close-up of the finish. This is a raw photo, no resizing or any other modifications.



While to the casual viewer, the surface may not look out of order, notice the reflection of the overhead light and how fuzzy it is.

Besides being dull and mottled, the entire hood had a condition referred to as, Shrink-Back, or Die-Back. This is where after a short period of time passes, two things happen, there is a chemical reaction that causes the primer coats to swell around the prep-work sanding marks, and, the new paint shrinks back into the prep work sanding marks.

The over all effect is a finish that has what appears to be sanding marks, under the finish.

With two negatives working against the finish, I decided to try to see if we could affect the paint in a positive, way, i.e. I want to do a Test Spot to see if we could improve the finish.

So I taped-off a section of the passenger side hood and performed a couple of tests using a rotary buffer and a combination of products and pads.



Alas, after machine cleaning the finish with two different combinations of products, it was easy to see that there was no improvement whatsoever.

In situation like these, it's wise to Walk Away, that is, nobody's product is going to fix this type of problem. In order to prevent any potential issues with the finish, or the owner, it is best to just walk away and write-off the demonstration.

That said, there's an old saying that goes like this,

Run what your brung

That's a saying used around the drag strip that meant, you race what you have, whatever it is, whatever the situation... The point being, once your at the races, it's all or nothing...

Because 4-5 people came down to Meguiar’s some as 2-hours away, I decided that even though the hood wash shot, the rest of the car looked pretty good, so while we did not take a rotary buffer to it to take the finish to its maximum potential, we did go over the entire finish with the PC/W-8006/#83 combo, followed by the PC/W-9006/Tech Wax combo.

There results look pretty good except for the hood. The car will be on display at the Viper Detail Day, and afterwards, this particular Viper will be going back for a repaint.

Here's some shots,

Going over the entire finish with the PC/W-8006/DACP combo, that's Dave, aka Newport Viper working the passenger door over,

[Mike Phillips]

Here's some After shots,



Notice how blurry the overhead light reflection is in the middle of the hood compared to the overhead light reflection on the top of the drivers side fender.

[Mike Phillips]

Here's a corner shot, (That means I’m crouched into the corner to get the shot),



Here's a side shot,



After working on the finish, we then turned our attention towards the wheels, tires and fender wells.

For the wheels, we used Gold Class Metal Polish, for the Tires we used Hot Shine Tire Spray

For the black plastic fender wells, we used the new Accent Dressing, which worked great by the way.





Because it's an aerosol, the Meguiar's Accent Dressing is easy to apply and made the inside of the fender wells a deep, dark black so they didn't take away from the beautiful wheels and tires.

Here’s Dave demonstrating how in his yellow Viper,



Be sure to check out this thread tomorrow for some incredibly shiny Vipers after we get through with them!

Viper Detail Day at Meguiar's

Mike

[rusty bumper]

Hi Mike,

When buffing out these kind of paint defects (Swirls, scratches, etc.), how many passes did it take to remove these areas with the DA Polisher, W-8006 pad & DACP?

The reason I ask, is because I usually wind up going over these types of areas many times myself...It makes for a long day!

[Marc Hufnagel]

The 9006 pad is the finishing pad, correct? If so, I thought I saw mention at some point that the 9006 is not suitable for NXT application because it tends to 'gum up' the pad?

Marc

[Superior Shine]

Mike,

Faced with this problem, I would of tried to color sand it out.

Was that an an option?

Please let me know a few days before the next time you have a late nighter. I would have loved to have been there.

[Newport Viper]

I saw the car. Color sanding was NOT an option. It was under the clear coat, but it was only under one side of the hood.
Any painters out there, that can give us a more detailed explination of this "die-back?"

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by Superior Shine
Mike,

Faced with this problem, I would of tried to color sand it out.

Was that an option?

Please let me know a few days before the next time you have a late nighter. I would have loved to have been there.

I tried a couple of Test Spots with the second one being the W-7006 with #84 Compound Power Cleaner. I buffed hard for a few passes and then inspected. There were no visible differences in the area I buffed and the before section I taped-off.

To me this said, "Walk away". The problem is in the paint, not on the surface, going deeper wasn't going to fix it.

Wet sanding, also called color sanding, is an option, but experience told me that it wasn’t' going to work on this paint type.

Mike

[Teak]

The viper looks good. I agree about walking away when the defect is in the paint and making the car shine with what you have. I worked on a dodge ram last summer with paint with in the paint sanding marks and did the same thing.

Did the #83 and the pc remove the buffer swirl?

I really like the accent spray for exterior plastics and wheel wells. Accent spray is really versitale product and dries completly and leaves a satin shine behind.

Eric

[Superior Shine]

Originally posted by Newport Viper

Any painters out there, that can give us a more detailed explination of this "die-back?"

I never heard of the term die back. To me the pic looks like what I would call shrinkage or shrinking. If that is what the problem is, it is usually found on a refinished vehicle. Shrinkage is when the paint or the primer under the paint (or both) cure and they "shrink" or "settle" down into sanding marks or other texture under the finish. This is usually caused by improper prepping of the panel before painting. Shrinkage can be avoided by finish sanding the body filler (if any) or primer with a finer grit paper and/or allowing the primer or filler to cure before top coating it. Also allowing the paint to properly cure before wet sanding is a good idea.

You could find a base coat that shrunk with a good clear coat over it. If that is the case, nothing can be done short of re-finishing the area. If the clear coat has also shrunk, a light color sanding of the area will usually level the area and correct the problem.