Yes. Believe it or not, not all traditional customs are flat black or Satin., some shine. Bo Huff's 56 Let's talk detailing... Weather allowing, I'm looking to do clay bar, some stainless and chrome polish this weekend. Anyone have any recommendations on products/techniques for making my gold chains shine? All BS aside, I need to do some serious stainless polishing this weekend. The stainless trim has all sorts of surface scratches and what not. What can I do to buff out these? What's this tinfoil trick I keep hearing about? I've never used a clay bar before, anything I should know before rubbing down 30 year old paint? Products? Tricks? Tips? -Dane
I just can't imagine a clay bar staying flat while abrading the surface of a black car. I think it would make waves in the surface all over the place. If it was mine I'd stick to sand paper and rubber sanding pads and blocks. I think that's the first '56 Merc I've ever seen with the side trim lined up in a continuous curve and not "bent" at the door line. Great work there!
I use a clay bar on the only shiney car i own, my wife's black accord. It dosen't really do anything to the paint (smoothing, color change, etc) it just cleans all the **** off for the wax. I swear by it, use it on her car 2 or 3 times a year.
Polishing chrome or ss with tinfoil & some ketchup is an old trick. I can't imagine it being as effective as modern products. I used an Eastwood ss polishing kit and a bench grinder to do all the shiny stuff on my Chubby. With a little patience, it worked great, even on seriously deep scratches. For regular upkeep, I use Wenol in the blue tube.
the clay bar works miracles. use that first, then hit it with mequiars show car glaze, after that wax it and your paint should be like gl***.
My dad SWEARS by that clay bar stuff from Mcguiers. You can really feel the difference with your hand, before and after. It takes off all the stuff that gets "imbedded"? in the paint throughout the year that doesn't come off with a normal wash job. He does it about once a year. BTW, that shot is AWESOME!
I just used a clay bar last month on my black '49 from "clay magic" and it worked wonders. Before the clay you could feel the roughness on the paint from tree sap, spots of grease from parking too close to a grill and who knows what else. After the clay, the finish is incredible. I would recommend a heavy waxing and buffing with an electric buffer afterwards. I did this on my car the weekend before the Pistons and Paint show and walked away with a trophy for best paint at the show... The clay is the **** (in a good way). HC
Sounds like clay bar is a must. I had the paint wetsanded about a year ago, and was impressed, but the concept of taking sandpaper at any grit to my paint scares me a bit. I just read about some guy using a dremel rotary tool for polishing chrome and stainless. I never really thought about it, but for $40 I guess you can't go wrong having a machine do the finger work for you. Polishing the nooks and crannies of a grill can make the fingers ache pretty quick. I'll have to pick one up and post some results. My grill has heavy oxidation after years of buildup without polish in the desert. -Dane
This isn't spam for this product (although it IS awesome) but it gives a lot of information on the process. Use whatever brand you feel comfortable with, but using the clay bar before building your wax makes an unbelievable difference........ http://www.zainostore.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=SGCWC&Store_Code=Z
I used to own some shiney vehicles, for the paint, try wizard products, glaze, and their mist and shine. That stuff works magic on black. For chrome and stainless try a product called Flitz, that stuff does wonders on chrome, aluminum, stainless etc. That is just my personal preferences, good luck with whatever you use.
That car belongs to Bo Huff, and it is inspiring. Bo Huff Kustoms When I bought my Falcon (black) in '96, I thought it would need a repaint. It looked like a chalkboard. I spent two days rubbing it out by hand using rubbing compound, polish and wax. I was amazed at how good it looked. I imagine that the clay is much like rubbing compound, no? How aggressive is clay by comparison?
I have friends at Meguiars that do the youth awareness program for the tuner cars. I learned a lot from them. 1. clay bar to take off all the nasty stuff from our atmosphere off your paint 2. Use Meguiars STEP 1 cleaner wax or scratch x- allow to haze and take off with a terry cloth or microfiber cloth 3. Follow up with Meguiars Polish- you don't have to wait for it to haze, just polish and wipe. Repeat as many times as you want to get a good shine 4. Finish with Meguairs Carnuba wax and you won't have to do this again for awhile -speedy-
forgot about stainless and chrome- FLITZ is a very good product. We buffed out all the stainless and chrome on my 60 olds. It coats and protects for 6 months. The water beads up on the chrome like you waxed it. -speedy-
Is the clay bar okay to use on basecoat / clear coat? I ***ume it must be being that it is relatively new??
I've used the clay bar on the acrylic black lacquer on my roadster a couple of times. The paint - not the shiniest, in fact a little dull - looked ok after a wax job with Wax Shop wax. Looked even better after the clay bar bit. Now I'm using Mothers Carnauba Cleaner/Polish wax. The car looks quite good after using it. If ... you drop the clay bar on the ground or garage floor, toss it out. If you try to use it afterward it will have abrasives embedded within and scratch heck out of the paint. Here it is about a week after the clay bar bit.
For getting a new finish up I like the new "True Finish Polish" I'm not sure If you can buy it yet? But I sure like it I got a sample and Then bought a Gallon from autobodystore.com But I'm not sure if they got it for sale yet No lable on mine ? Not been over there in a few ........ Its one of those Burn down type compounds,, I think...Not sure But Its nice.. Yup looked good till I wanted a chop. Yeah you can change your mind any time! The Picklex I used for keeping the car in bare steel seems to work good too.
[ QUOTE ] I had the paint wetsanded about a year ago, and was impressed, but the concept of taking sandpaper at any grit to my paint scares me a bit. [/ QUOTE ] You do want to be careful here. I read an interesting wet sanding article in a car mag and decided to give it a try on the 32's about two year old dull paint. Dull from the application, not fading etc. I had some 1000 grit on a rubber backing block - the typical 3M fairly stiff sanding block. A few drops of detergent in the sanding water and I started in on the trunk lid figuring it would be an easy repaint if I screwed it up. Started noticing minute flakes of paint in the water. They were a lot like fine grains of sand. I quit sanding, I hadn't gone very far. The paint was coming off in minute chunks and scratched the heck out of the paint surface. I ended up rubbing that damage out with some very fine rubbing compound and a pad on a polisher. A Wen polisher designed for wax jobs etc. I found the body grinders etc. went too fast for the skill level I was at and used the slower and lighter Wen polisher to rub the paint out originally.
Clay bars work great to remove falout from the paint. As an FYI clay bars come in different grits just like sand paper. I use P&S regular to get off all the fallout out of the paint, and a heavier bar to remove overspray. Also when using a clay bar you want to use a liquid to help the bar slide over the paint. I use a paint gloss (P&S) for this. I tear the bar in half and take one side and flaten it out, run it over the car a few times then fold it in half and flaten it out and rub on the car some more. By doing this, any grit that is picked up is put in the middle of the bar so I don't continue to rub the car with a dirty bar. This helps to eliminate fine scratches or worse. When using compounds remember they come in different degrees of harshness as well. I always start with the mildest and work my way up. That way I don't have to spend a lot of time fixing scratches caused by the compounds. When using a buffer look for a variable speed buffer, going faster isn't always best when dealing with paint. Make sure the pad is always level with the panel you are buffing. I don't go over any spot more than 3 times before removing the compound and checking the results. Do small areas at a time. Also there are different pads to use depending on what shape the paint is in. I don't get into polishing, I just put wax on the chrome or finished aluminum. The way yor car looks I would clay bar and then wax. If you do have light scrathes or if you have to use any compunds then use a polish right before you wax.
The Jalopy Journal
