Finally Restoring This E30...

[Andrew318is]

Subbed! love where this is goin!

[e30edward]

Amazing work! Very jealous about the cardinal seats.

[Butler]

I love your threads.

[will61]

great work! This thread makes me happy

[RoyaLife]

your pretty much doing to the black e30 what i wanna do to my e30 lol good work brother. sub'd

[303e30]

Amazing what a little bit of polishing can do. Interior looks great!

[Zreberlcoe]

You are as patient as I have ever seen. Get at it!

[TimKninja]

This is what a project thread should be.

A+++ Im gonna go re-read your other one because its that damn good.

[Pino]

You guys are very nice, thank you for the support and kind words :)




So I finally got the two broken e30's out of the garage, and managed my first big detail.

The paint really needed a refreshing. And this is by far my favorite part of starting a new project. I've been detailing for over 9 years now on the side and in between school, it's kinda my therapy and meditation. Hard to explain. I like to think of it as art restoration. I honestly truly believe that automobiles are functioning art and in my opinion the highest form of art. The Mona Lisa does absolutely nothing for me, especially when compared to a clean e30. And that's not meant as a joke. That said, I think of detailing as art restoration. There's a beautiful model somewhere below this car's layer of crud. I just gotta coax her out.






Step #1: Wash. Obviously.






Step #2: Claybar. Rubbing this clay around the lubricated paint will loosed and lift tiny impurities in the paint. Impurities that you definitely do NOT want to be buffing/rotating into the paint when you polish with an orbital, let alone by hand with a wax applicator.






Step #3: Wash again.Claybaring lifts a lot of impurities, but it also pushes some around once they've been lifted. They're still hovering around. Gotta wash em off! And dry with a 100% terrycloth towel. Wiping a car down dry is very important in my opinion, even if you're not going to detail it afterwards.

Ah! Snow!




Step #4: This is a big one for me. I've never done this before. This car's special not only because it's a higher mileage example, but also because it's single-stage-black. No clearcoat. So I talked to some true detailing experts to get a sense of what I should do to condition the paint before I go crazy on it. They suggested Meguiars #7. It's been around for something like 80 years. Basically it conditions the single stage paint and makes it more responsive to polishes, waxes, etc.



Just the hood...




What did I do here? Apply the #7 on to a microfiber and buff it into the paint. It's more of an oil than a compound or wax. Use the same section of microfiber over and over and over. The black color you see is NOT the shwarz paint, but rather the aluminum from the paint itself. I went over the whole car 4x, once an hour, and let it sit over night. Then I did another coating in the morning before I started the polishing. The more soaked the microfiber gets with #7 the better for the conditioning and the less product you have to use. Look how it's just soaking through the layers!



Conditioning overnight...



Then take a clean microfiber and buffed out the oils. Gat' dayum she felt better...




Step #5: Orbital machine polish with a medium cutting pad Poorboy's Swirl Remover #1 for light scratching swirls. Mucho better.





Step #6: Orbital machine polish with a medium cutting pad Poorboy's Swirl Remover #2 for medium scratching swirls. This is a true cutting compound to remove imperfections and damage. Be careful.




Step #7: Orbital machine polish with a light cutting pad Klasse All-In-One polish. I love this stuff. My go-to-product. It brings me a lot of depth and pop.




Step #8: www.paintscratch.com 's paint-pen. I have some chips in the paint here and there i fixed. I ONLY use these pens. I hate using the brushes that leave hair strokes in the paint. Simpe and easy to use. $15 for the color + $10 for the clearcoat pen if you need one.





She's looking GREAT right now. But most importantly she feels better, more healthy, and will be much better protected in the coming months. This whole detail took me about 10 hours. Judy-Boots the garage dog definitely approves. Tomorrow i'll get you some real pictures in a photoshoot around Baltimore.





:wave

[Simon S]

Sweet jumpin jimminy christ !!

nice work !

[e30edward]

Amazing! A good detail is something my car is in dire need of.

[bmoores]

Great work!

I took the buffer to mine last weekend and its amazing what a few stages of correction will do to a car.

[EN318isPDX]

Amazing! A good detail is something my car is in dire need of.

This, very nice work

New mtech boots! I got these from a one of the forums. Someone by the name of Matt-B sells them for $25. Too good to be true, right? Right. They're not cut properly whatsoever for the shape of the boot frames. And that's *IF* the guy ever sends them to you. He sketched out on me twice and on the third attempt finally shipped them out, 2 weeks late. Don't buy from him. He's banned on R3v for a reason.

I had similar experience with Matt, Paid for boots, waited almost a year for them. Received them and the quality was terrible. Threads hanging out (got what I paid for) After trimming them for awhile and trying to get them to look right I just threw them away and ordered OEM leather boot.

[RoyaLife]

i love the turn out.

[blksuperman2]

Man, you give me hope and inspiration, but alas, I have no where near the patience you have which is why I'd pay someone else to do it. I'm currently in Northern VA and would definitely make a trip to B-More. How much would you charge to do this? (PM me if you'd like)