Here's a 1999 Porsche Boxster with over 100,000 miles. The current owner purchased this car off eBay, and it was supposedly in Excellent condition. Let me tell you, when I saw the swirls, I had a grin from ear to ear! But oh man, this job really challenged both my physical and mental state. There were key scratches, a large dent, gouges, etchings, swirls, deep scratches, and plenty of other defects that I knew couldn't be repaired.



Wheels were caked in brake dust!









Large dent between fender and vent


Ouch, this key scratch goes down to metal and stretches from the front of the car to the back!












Another large defect on the drivers door. It looks like the result of an accident with a machine. The horizontal scratch has uniform square shaped indentations. The vertical scratch is raised and offset from the main surface.






Light hologram visible on door edge bottom












A quick test spot was done using two passes of M80 and a W8006 pad on my Makita. But this wasn't going to be as simple as that!




I called my friend Rick from Dent Express and he came right over to fix the problem! I like working with Rick. He's a super nice guy. With his body shop and paint experience he showed how this panel had been in an accident and repainted, and showed how the grill he was holding was improperly installed.


I washed using the two bucket method using both the Dirt Guard and Grit Guard. Meguiar's Gold Class Car Wash Soap was used along with a lambswool wash mitt. Then I clayed using the Meguiar's Professional blue clay.


Got the top taped off


My neighbor Larry stopped by with his Porsche



After claying and buffing, the paint wasn't looking as good as I wanted, so out came the Unigrit to try to minimize some of these defects. I knew I wouldn't be able to wetsand them away, but I wanted to try to make it look better.












Then it got dark! But I was actually waiting for that. Under darkness with just my overhead lights, I could really see the paint clearly.




Once I had finished polishing, and was getting ready to wax, I removed the plastic sheet, and taped off the canvas top so I could wax the paint.


This is where that expensive wide tape really comes in handy!


Check out the trim at the base of the windshield.


What color do you think this trim is? It looks grey in person.


I think it's supposed to be black!!! Like this!


Yep, can you see the true color?? I've started to apply it to the trim.


To get a good feel for the true color, I applied some tape to compare the before and after.


OMG, can you believe this??? The darker side was one application of the gel I use for restoring plastics.


The black side is not wet, and the gel is clear--silicone based. It's not black or paint! You apply it to neglected plastics and it restores them! I use it on my customers MINI Cooper plastic trim all the time.

Looking at this front grill, I was thinking--this white grill can't possibly be black too can it?? Well I didn't take any pix because no, it wasn't black. LOL. It was actually a grey color, but the difference after the application wasn't night and day.


Here's the trim all restored!



The trim around the canvas top could also use restoring.


Pretty amazing huh? I only applied it to the front portion, not the rear portion.


A photo of my Sidekick 3 showing that it's 11:08PM now. I started at 10AM.



LSP is Prima Epic. Blue in this picture.


Holding my Xenon Swirl Finder light--no swirls! Green in this picture!














This is a very strange metallic paint. It can look green, blue, or purple at any given time. I did my best to restore the paint, despite some of its serious flaws. Although I knew going into it there were inherent problems that would prevent a flawless finish, I still strived for it. That meant 2 passes of M80 with the Makita at first, then 1 pass with M83 with the Makita, then 1 pass with M84 and W9006 with Makita, and final finishing with the PC and M80, often times at speed 6. Working in the extreme cold actually prevented the backing plate from heating up and suffering delamination issues. I knew there was some benefit to freezing my butt off! LOL

Day 2 Photos
Taken by owner

Customer Photo on Day 2


Customer Photo on Day 2


Customer Photo on Day 2


Customer Photo on Day 2



Customer Photo on Day 2


Customer Photo on Day 2


Customer Photo on Day 2


Customer Photo on Day 2


Customer Photo on Day 2

 

Astounding improvment! I will commence grovelling for you to come to SF.... pleeeeeeeeeeaze

:D

Poor car though, I sure hope the rest of it was not as missrepresented and it runs okay

 

that car transformed from YUCK to wow!

 

Very nice!

Poor scratch though.

the trim was CF, pretty sure

You mention the paint looks different from angles. I think its supposed to do that, that color is not one of the "free colors" but probably cost $3K extra

 

That poor poor mistreated boxster, made even more sad by the fact that as chows points out that paint job was a $3000 factory special order.

Thank goodness the owner found you Richard. Hopefully this new owner will be a lot better for the future of this car. It's off to a much better start, thanks to you, that's for sure.

 

Thanks everybody for the kind words. That trim wasn't CF. Just textured plastic.

Scott over at CCC called this paint "Chrome" for it's changing colors.

Richard

 

awesome improvement. what a vast differance in the swirls. great job as always!

 

Thanks, this car was quite a challenge. Everytime I thought I was making an improvement, it just didn't look good enough to me. I knew I was making a huge improvement from what it used to look like, but it needed more than that. This was a Porsche after all. That's when I decided that wetsanding was needed--an aggressive solution to a very difficult problem. Working all the swirls out really took a lot of time, my fingers are still sore and cramped from the workout! The customer stayed with me from start to finish--well he did take a lunch and dinner break, but he stuck it out with me in the cold! He was awesome!

 

Brilliant!!!

 

is the actual name patented by dupont for the general variety of this paint.appears red/green/blue/black/pink/in different lighting conditons. was popular on some middle 90s mustangs. porsche has their own version, made by spies-hecker (sp?) that we just di a 911 front bumper with-took us 5 weeks to get the paint from germany. sure did match well though.

 

 

I can't say enough HOW MUCH YOU ROCK!!!

I feel like the luckiest person in the world that I was introduced to you right after I purchased my MINI. Who knows what damage I would've caused had you not taught me the correct way to baby my baby at one of your many clinics.

YOU ROCK YOU ROCK YOU ROCK YOU ROCK YOU ROCK YOU ROCK

 

haha. x2?

 

Awwwww blush

You've definitely inspired me in more ways than you can imagine. I've also always been grateful for your support in c3 and of course as a friend!

Thank you!

 

Great job again Richard. What a difference you made on this car. One question, why do two coats of M80 with the makita, then go to M83, isn't M83 more aggressive? Whatever the reason is, it worked out great for you. What did you use on the plastic?

 

wow... i don't even know what to say. incredible. can't believe that car was listed in Excellent condition!

 

It was my process. I initially tried out two passes (remember we aren't adding coats of polish--it's a process) of M80 and it worked on the spot I tried. I should have done more test spots as I found that it wasn't aggressive enough for all parts of the car. My pad was becoming saturated before the swirls were removed, so I went a step more aggressive using M83. FWIW, I used approx 7 buffing pads for this car.

M83 worked for certain sections but not all. Essentially ended up using a number of different processes on select portions of the car to get the best results. At one point I used my old standby trick of using the M84 Compound with the Finishing Pad--W9006.

The trouble with working on a car in this bad of a shape is you don't know the history. Has the car been buffed? How many times? Did they do any sanding on the paint? What risks am I taking by following my steps. It's best to have the owner fully involved and in sections that were extremely risky, the owner knew if I didn't try to make it look better that a repaint would be necessary anyways, so the risk was worth it to him.

Richard

 

I opened the thread and started through the "before" pics and thought 'this is gonna be good", and it was! The wet sanding is extremely scary to me, that's where I would always find a pro (like you, Richard).

 

That POOR car. Obviously preowned by somebody with too much money to appreciate what he/she had. A sweet-16 present perhaps?

You did a wonderful job...

 

Once again looks great. What did you use on the trim? Is that m40(maybe not ). Does it last long and actually restore or is it like tire shine, that needs applied every time it rains. Either way, car looks MUCH better. Sad to see a Porsche in that condition. Any car really...

 

It's a product that I've recommended here on NAM for quite awhile for restoring trim (but few take it up because it's hard to get). It lasts for months through all kinds of weather conditions. It's a silicone gel that wipes on easily and soaks in fast. You still need to clean the trim--if you have wax on the trim, and put the gel on, your trim will be dark black but will still have the wax residue--which can be work on with #39 or #40 (I don't think it's called M40 because I don't think it's a Mirror Glaze product--I could be wrong)--but the black trim isn't affected during cleaning--meaning you don't have to redress after cleaning the wax.

Very soon, I'll be carrying this product, so I'm gonna not say what it is just yet. Shhhhhh. LOL

I tried Nero on MiniClo's black MCS and a week later when I saw the car, Nero has completely worn off. So I applied this gel and I'm pretty certain it still looks great--I used it on my own '03 MINI and for maintenance, I just took a dry rag and wiped off any dirty buildup, and it looked good as new.

Thanks! That's why I tell people not to attempt to wetsand unless they truly know what they are doing. Each scratch was worked on using 3000 grit Unigrit soaked in car wash solution. Following the scratch, I didn't make any more than 5 to 6 light passes (basically dragging the weight of the paper) along the scratch--checking my results after every pass! Any more pressure, or one too many passes could spell disaster and a new paint job. Don't ask me how I learned that. LOL

 

I tired. Those meg numbers confuse me.

 

Jeez, all I got a 69 bug .

Richard, thanks again for posting is such details. Nice photos.

 

OT, I caught a bit of one of those sweet 16 shows on MTV2 where the overpriviledged daughter gets a ferrari at her party for her 16th.

So when I saw that beautiful Porsche int hat condition, I could only imagine who owned it to begin with...

 

Chrome? I can find no reference to Chrome

For a 99 Boxster, I think the title was correct "Midnight" as in color code 62, Midnight Blue Metallic, cost $2955.

I checked on Renntech and same thing ... nothing chrome for 986s or 911s. Maybe "chrome" is the original name of the paint before the vendor gets their hands on it?

The cost is correct, about $3K, one of the more expensive metallics. It "could" be a special order paint, more $$ but all those are made to order.

Interesting the trim isnt CF. Maybe its too old a car. Pretty sure the new ones are all CF.