1972 Buick Skylark (Epic) Scott CCC

[OctaneGuy]

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]

[kenchan]

super deep color with clarity! nice!!

[kenchan]

is it just me or when you see octaneguy's posts, you start skipping
all the pictures and scroll all the way down first (finished product),
and then go up?

[OctaneGuy]

Haha shall I start posting in reverse??? LOL. I try to keep some kind of suspense by forcing you to wait until the end to get the "cherry".

Richard

Originally Posted by kenchan

is it just me or when you see octaneguy's posts, you start skipping
all the pictures and scroll all the way down first (finished product),
and then go up?

[El_Jefe]

thats as sick mofo'in car Rich.

When I get the cash, I will fly you to NY one day and have you do my car It is on my list of when you got cash in 1-2 years to do.

That would be a fun car to do. Mini's are so new and picky. that car is just a steel beast. You cant dent that, no plastic/rubber trim to worry about, just buzz away. Jeez. what sick car. I am thinking about prima now definitely so. M80, pc, your video and then prima line.

[S Curvz]

Richard looks great. One question, you said you use M66 with the PC, why? Isnt m66 a quick detailer? What trick of the trade is this? Please share!

[planeguy]

Makes me want to drive to california just so richard can work on my car!

[MiniMaybee]

Great results OG - as usual.
When taping (which I hate to do and may never do again) like you did to protect the high spot from burn, don't you end up with a swirl streak? Do you go back by hand afterward or what? I've struggled with this for a while - taping protects areas you wish to protect, but leaves the paint in current state underneath. How do you get around this?
Oh did I mention great job! Thanks for your efforts in posting these.

[Greatbear]

Originally Posted by OctaneGuy

I didn't even know Buik had a "hot rod", shows how much I know about Buiks.

I can tell, after all, Buick has a "c" in it. But, you are more than forgiven seeing that you did such an incredible job on the car! Simply amazing as usual, but even moreso that you are dealing with a 35 year old car rather than a 35 month old.

[OctaneGuy]

I love M66--a one step cleaner wax. Its like blending the cleaning/polishing properties of M80 with a polymer wax---so after you finish polishing, you just let it dry, then wipe and you're done. Theoretically anyways. I like to use it on black finishes that are scratch sensitive for it's filling properties. I don't like to use it as the LSP unless it's a really huge white suburban or something, lol. I always follow it with my preferred synthetic which is Prima Epic.

M66 is one of those products that has it's place and works great, but it's not for all finishes.

Originally Posted by S Curvz

Richard looks great. One question, you said you use M66 with the PC, why? Isnt m66 a quick detailer? What trick of the trade is this? Please share!

I was most concerned about the high point when using the rotary buffer. Once I had finished that step and moved onto the PC, I removed the tape, and very carefully with light pressure worked on the high point with the PC. Had this been a single stage finish which would be even softer, I would have had to work on them by hand using a product like ScratchX.

Originally Posted by MiniMaybee

Great results OG - as usual.
When taping (which I hate to do and may never do again) like you did to protect the high spot from burn, don't you end up with a swirl streak? Do you go back by hand afterward or what? I've struggled with this for a while - taping protects areas you wish to protect, but leaves the paint in current state underneath. How do you get around this?
Oh did I mention great job! Thanks for your efforts in posting these.

OOOOOOOH DOh!!!!!!!!!! I thought the spelling looked funny.
Thanks!!!

Originally Posted by Greatbear

I can tell, after all, Buick has a "c" in it. But, you are more than forgiven seeing that you did such an incredible job on the car! Simply amazing as usual, but even moreso that you are dealing with a 35 year old car rather than a 35 month old.

[Edge]

Originally Posted by OctaneGuy

OOOOOOOH DOh!!!!!!!!!! I thought the spelling looked funny.
Thanks!!!

Richard... I can edit the thread title to add the C if you like (since only moderators can edit thread titles after they are posted)... but I'd leave your post for you to edit and correct - that's your responsibility!

Great job on the car though, it looks awesome. At one of the MOTDs I might just have to hire you.

[OctaneGuy]

Haha yes please, edit the title for me. I appreciate it. As for the Dragon--only if it doesn't rain this year. LOL

Richard

Originally Posted by Edge

Richard... I can edit the thread title to add the C if you like (since only moderators can edit thread titles after they are posted)... but I'd leave your post for you to edit and correct - that's your responsibility!

Great job on the car though, it looks awesome. At one of the MOTDs I might just have to hire you.

[kenchan]

octaneguy- i noticed that you went from the Prima polishes to your Meg
M-series polishes. is there a particular reason why that is or is it just
because you have more long term experience with the M-series and faster
to work with (like you know wat's what like the back of your hands)?

im sure time is money!!

[OctaneGuy]

Hmmm??? You mean in general???

I tried out Cut, Swirl, Finish, and Swirl is really the multipurpose one that works like M80, but for myself, I'm not particularly thrilled with the product. As I've mentioned before, it could be simply because I'm trying to use the Prima products with the Meguiar's pads which is like trying to get good results from two different systems, not originally designed for each other.

So for now, my preference is to continue using Meguiar's polishes with the Meguiar's pads, and finish with Prima Epic.

Eventually when I get the LC pads, I may find that I like the Prima polishes better as well, but I will post my comparison on that later.

Richard

Originally Posted by kenchan

octaneguy- i noticed that you went from the Prima polishes to your Meg
M-series polishes. is there a particular reason why that is or is it just
because you have more long term experience with the M-series and faster
to work with (like you know wat's what like the back of your hands)?

im sure time is money!!

[umberto]

amazing amazing work on that car....now we need to see a picture of you sitting in it with a pack of Marlboros rolled up in the sleeve of your white T-shirt.....but first:

1) Richard, how do you decide when the PC/M80 is not enough and you turn to your rotary instead?

2) transferring your above work to the MINI line, on a chili red MINI, would you go M80 to M66 to Epic, or M80 to Amigo to Epic?

[OctaneGuy]

Hahah, yeah I can picture that...NOT!!! LOL

1.) Well it really comes from experience. Most of the time I can look at a car and determine whether it should be restored with the right tool by looking at the age, paint type, number of defects, how complex the panels are. I always want to use the least aggressive tool to start with to get the job done right. Sometimes, I may start with the PC to see how things work, and realize when doing my test spot that it's not working well enough, and I need a rotary. Sometimes I find I can do an entire car with a PC, and only use the rotary on certain spots that need more aggressive work. If sanding is involved, a rotary is my preferred tool for removing sanding marks. Some paint types like Corvettes are notoriously hard, and only a rotary can be used to restore them.

2.)I wouldn't use M66 on a CR MINI. Depending on the condition I would use either M80 or M83, then go directly to Epic. I might try a pass of Amigo after M80/M83 on a small spot and see if it looks noticeably better or not. The only time I might use M66 on a MINI might be because I either don't have time to do a full polish/wax job which would never be the case on a customers MINI--but maybe my own. Or if I'm working on black paint and once again, can't fully polish it out for whatever reason.

Richard

Originally Posted by umberto

amazing amazing work on that car....now we need to see a picture of you sitting in it with a pack of Marlboros rolled up in the sleeve of your white T-shirt.....but first:

1) Richard, how do you decide when the PC/M80 is not enough and you turn to your rotary instead?

2) transferring your above work to the MINI line, on a chili red MINI, would you go M80 to M66 to Epic, or M80 to Amigo to Epic?

[mcdbrendan]

Originally Posted by OctaneGuy

Some paint types like Corvettes are notoriously hard, and only a rotary can be used to restore them.

Richard

Does this apply to the 2007 ZO6?

[OctaneGuy]

This applies to all Corvettes in general, regardless of year. The 2007 Z06 I did had hard paint that was still scratch sensitive.

Originally Posted by mcdbrendan

Does this apply to the 2007 ZO6?

[mcdbrendan]

Originally Posted by OctaneGuy

This applies to all Corvettes in general, regardless of year. The 2007 Z06 I did had hard paint that was still scratch sensitive.

Sounds good. What are some other notoriously hard paints?

[OctaneGuy]

Like I said it varies. I worked on a black 2002 MINI with super hard paint, and it wasn't until about 30 minutes into it, that I realized that 2/3rds of the car had been repainted and my first test spot was on the original soft factory paint.

Lotus paint is pretty soft. LOL.

Originally Posted by mcdbrendan

Sounds good. What are some other notoriously hard paints?

[kenchan]

Originally Posted by OctaneGuy

Hmmm??? You mean in general???

I tried out Cut, Swirl, Finish, and Swirl is really the multipurpose one that works like M80, but for myself, I'm not particularly thrilled with the product. As I've mentioned before, it could be simply because I'm trying to use the Prima products with the Meguiar's pads which is like trying to get good results from two different systems, not originally designed for each other.

So for now, my preference is to continue using Meguiar's polishes with the Meguiar's pads, and finish with Prima Epic.

Eventually when I get the LC pads, I may find that I like the Prima polishes better as well, but I will post my comparison on that later.

Richard

i see, thanks for the info. that make sense.

[mcdbrendan]

haha. i will keep that in mind. there is a lotus elise down th street and i am abotu to write the owner a letter... hopefulyl all goes well and i can detail his car for him.

[Detailers Paradise]

Originally Posted by OctaneGuy

Lotus paint is pretty soft. LOL.

Originally Posted by mcdbrendan

haha. i will keep that in mind. there is a lotus elise down th street and i am abotu to write the owner a letter... hopefulyl all goes well and i can detail his car for him.

Yes!! I wholeheartedly agree that Lotus has soft paint. On top of that, the Elise's paint responses can vary from color to color and whether or not it was painted early in production vs late in production, etc. In other words, if you figure out one Elise don't assume you've got the Elise paint figured out! The next one might be completely different.

Either way, it's PITA soft paint! :impatient Our Bordeaux Red Pearl Elise would scratch when someone breathed on it. No joke.

If you end up doing your neighbor's Elise, give us a call and talk to Nick. He has lots of experience with the Elise paint and can help you navigate your work.

Another soft paint is Ferrari paint. It'll drive you nuts getting it perfect. BMW paint is another soft one, although not as much as Lotus and Ferrari. BMW paint, especially on newer models, also comes with orange peel as a standard option. True fact. So that can be a frustration too.

Have you experienced the same of Ferraris and BMWs, OctaneGuy, I mean, Richard?

Oh, and resprays, aka after-market paint jobs, also tend to be very soft too. It's always interesting to work on a car with just a door panel repainted, like from a repair. You'll use a completely different set of products/tools on the door panel vs the rest of the body in most cases.

Hope that helps!

-Heather

[Scavenger]

NICE!! Yeah, Buicks rock! Buick has many Hot Rod's... if you're interested in some history, look up these acronyms:

GS, GSX, GN, GNX

If you ever see a Buick "Grand National"..... be scared! very scared!!

[Minut]

You got machine guns pointing out the back of your MINI?