Hi all! So this customer was a referral from another happy customer of mine and when he called me and told me the problem with the car I got excited immediately. He told me that it was severely oxidized and that he wanted to restore it to its former red color. We made an appointment and some days later he showed up to my shop for me to give an estimate. We agreed that a one-step polish would be sufficient to restore the color and surprisingly enough, he agreed to my price and we set an appointment. When the car arrived back to me on the set date, I realized that this guy really loves this car... there were no scratches on the kick panels or really anywhere on any of the plastic parts and the inside of the car was immaculate (sorry didn't take any pics )... It was really in pristine condition aside from the paint. I love this kind of customer! Anyway, once I started removing the oxidation (Wolf's WP-1N and a finishing pad) it looked... well, red. This step revealed the true tragedy that was covered by the years of oxidation... it was scratched beyond infinity. After polishing my test area and seeing how horrible it looked underneath, I just couldn't find the strength to let those scratches remain on the finish. Therefore, as I had no other appointments for the day, I broke out the Wooly Mammoth (8" wool pad) and some Wolf's WP-6H polish and went to town removing the scratches. I finished with Wolf's WP-1N and a finishing pad and the LSP for today was Wolf's New Moon wax. Much to my surprise, this paint was extremely hard (I don't do many Opels so it was a surprise to me...)!! It was a single-stage paint and fairly thin so I didn't get too crazy, and furthermore, time only allowed me to remove a great deal of the scratches from the upper half of the car. So basically I did a 2-stepper on the entire upper half of the car. Here's the pics >> The test area, you can't really see the scratches here, but there were plenty... The outside detox took about 3 hours... Fiddy fiddys... Ferrari or Ford, Porsche or Peugeot... bring it on I say, bring it on!! This was a very satisfying detail and I've already gotten 2 referrals from this customer... yes it was a lot more work than we'd agreed on, but the customer was over the moon and this is why I love my job . Thanks for reading and to all the Playboy subscribers, thanks for "reading"! - Jesse O'Connor
Not surprising he was stoked. Talk about taking years off. Nice work! Quite a few years ago I did an old merc 450SL ( from memory) it was really badly oxidised, more so than this astra. Parts of the car looked almost white! Anyway I got the deep red colour back, but when I did the wash prior to sealing it had all dulled back again. Not as bad as before but it had lost it's gloss and clarity. Had too much of the pigments leeched out after the years of neglect?
Thanks guys! The re-dulling occurs when the oils from the polish evaporate. Sort of like an old, faded gray shirt turns black when it gets wet. It probably just came back in certain spots, no? Unfortunately there is a "point of no return" (when too much of the pigment has been leeched out as you've said) and even waxing won't stop it from coming back because the oils will eventually gas out. Oxidized paints are much more porous so the gassing occurs much sooner than usual. I've got this customer on a quarterly waxing schedule and I'm very curious how it will hold up! Will post!
