Here we've got a really nice "flame orange" 1972 Bui(c)k Skylark. I didn't even know Bui(c)k had a "hot rod", shows how much I know about Bui(c)ks. I was only 2 years old and not even in the country when this thing was tearing up the track. My memory of a Bui(c)k is a huge brown station wagon that we all used to pile into as kids....
This car has been painted a few times, it's got a modern clearcoat. During my inspection the pinstripe on the fiberglass hood, and what appears to be handpainted lettering where areas to be careful of. I took some measurements with my electronic thickness gauge, and found the paint varied quite a bit from 5Mil to 10 Mil. The hood wasn't measurable because of it's non ferrous nature.
The owner, Scott of Central Coast Coopers, also has a very nice custom painted MINI Cooper S as you can see.
Looks like someone was using a buffer on the paint--it wasn't the owner for sure. OOOh, he's got a really nice BMW motorcycle too--notice the red/black theme on all his vehicles??? Well the Bui(c)k's color is original, so he didn't want to make it red. LOL.
I laughed when I saw this. It sure didn't look beautiful to me, See Ya Mother!
So I got my buckets ready. I've got one soap bucket with a Dirt Guard system and two rinse buckets with Grit Guards. Why the difference? No reason, other than I'm testing out the Dirt Guard to see how effective it is. With a car as large as this Skylark, I needed both buckets to properly rinse my mitt as I worked.
For final rinsing, I used my water deionizer, the CR Spotless system.
All rinsed off and ready for drying.
Meanwhile, my MINI was on a lift and getting new lowering springs installed as well as a few other areas being fixed.
Back to the Skylark. Under my lights you can see some light swirls in the paint.
Using my thickness gauge, I'm checking a small area here. That's 8.3Mil.
Here's I've polished the paint very and removed the swirls to the right. I also was going to clay the paint, but forgot to before the test spot. But M80 did it's magic as a paint cleaner and the polished side was as smooth as if I had clayed it. Rubbing my hand across the paint, you could hear the scratchy sound on the left, and silence as you crossed the test spot line. I still clayed the paint anyways using Meguiar's Professional Blue Clay (Mild).
Pulled back you can see see the difference in the test spot.
The front of the car was in much worse shape as you can see here.
Masked off in preparation for the test spot.
Big difference already!
Tape and towel removed. Only rotary work here--W8006 and M80 followed by W9006 and M82.
Quite a noticeable improvment.
Notice the blue tape running down the center. This was to protect the high point from accidentally burning the paint in case my pad got too close.
My lighting rig is clearly visible here.
All polished out now! What an improvement!
I polished the rims by hand with NXT All Metal Polysh and dressed the tires with Hyperdressing
Polish was M80 with rotary and W8006 pad followed by M80 with PC then Epic as LSP by PC with W9006 pad, removed by PC with W7006 pad and MF bonnet.
For the black paint I did M80 with Rotary and W8006 pad, M82 with Rotary and W9006 pad, M80 with PC and W8006 pad, M66 with PC and W8006, Epic with PC and W9006 and removal with PC with W7006 and mf bonnet.
I spent about 10 hours on this car. It was a lot of fun though hard work. I cleaned the glass with Prima Clarity. Oh by the way, this car IS for sale.
[edited by author: I goofed and forgot the C in Buick in the article, but didn't want any posts that pointed this out to be confusing, so I added parenthesis, LOL]
