JackBenny's 1991 318is Project

[ahriley91]

Note to self: Children hinder car projects.

Benefits of being a college student is that I don't have to worry about that. haha

[theryp]

i wanna be you

[jackbenny]

The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Note to self: Children hinder car projects.

The troof, this man speaks it!

When things are going well, updates are pretty easy to make. When things aren't going so well, you just don't want to share misery. And right now I'm in the 2 steps forward, 1 step back mode of the project.

The focus of this past month has been wet sanding and polishing the paint on the car. I employed the PPG Deltron system when the car was painted over a year ago. It should come as no surprise that the clear coat was freakin' hard, it's had a year to dry! Regardless, I wanted that pristine, shiny look so I took to it. The one important detail to note is that while the body work I did came out pretty nice, I have no experience wet sanding and using a high speed buffing system. And no amount of reading on the internet can really prepare you when you actually go out there and do it.

As i initially had a free weekend with the wife and kid out of town, I elected to start on the trunk lid, which was the flattest surface I could think of.



I was careful and taped the edges to prevent damaging the thinner paint located there. I started sanding to level out the paint.



The sanding started with 1500 grit. After everything I've gone through, I would have to say this was a mistake. Once I started using 2000 grit initially and using 1500 only when necessary, I started getting better results.



You'll note in this extreme closeup, there were some flaws in the paint. I expected this as we didn't use a booth and little flecks of dust would invariably find their way into the paint. These would just require a bit more attention.

That unfortunately would become my downfall...



What looked to be a piece of grass...something was ultimately a deep, deep scratch. Eventually I sanded through the clear, through the paint and to the primer. As you might imagine, once the grey was seen, there was an intense session of swearing, followed by the random throwing of objects within arms reach and concluding with a soft muffled whimpering.



I managed to get another spot on the back of the trunk lid but wasn't as upset because it would be covered by the Mtech I replica wing.



nice huh?

I continued to press on with the polishing. If the panel needed to be repainted, might as well practice the polishing right?



I believe I took this picture after using my fine cut.



The polisher I used was a variable speed, two head cyclo unit. The thought behind this was that it wouldn't get the surface too hot and reduce the risk of the paint burning through. The unit is pretty cool and the design really hasn't changed from the 50's except for the variable speed. The construction is something you don't see a lot these days. This is a great polisher but the lack of heat would not enable some scratches to be removed and require a different approach.



For the less mature audience, I will say it for you.... Boobies. That is all.

The result of the polishing was this...



The picture does look nice but what it doesn't show is all the tiny scratches left behind. At this point, I needed a pick me up.



Looks like a car again!

I thought, why stop there so I added some identification too.







tee hee, I'm lying. <shifty>

[jackbenny]

the hood...

At this point, I thought I would try the hood.



same procedure, different panel.

I started with the sanding.



Got it nice and dull and flat





I'm going to fast forward through some agony. The result of this polishing episode was the following:



Still not good enough. Something was wrong with my technique. Just too many scratches.



The panel was pretty flat though so I was doing something right.



My parents came to visit their grandchild and I immediately grabbed my father and threw him to work. He had done the wetsanding and polishing on his white 911 so I was ready for some advice. We pulled the car outside to take a look in the sunlight.



same result though, too many scratches.



the tape was to break the car down into sections. I needed to find the right combination of pad and media for the polishing. I resanded the hood once more but I had help this time and it went a bit faster.



I did get a rotary buffer. This and the combination of my drill for tight spots yielded the following results...







Since I was pleased with the result, I started on the driver's side fender.



Initially I was pleased with the results...



but the next day I went out and saw a lot of swirls. Dejected, I went to the passenger fender to start work and this happened...





I didn't take a picture of the bubbled paint because I was too busy throwing crap around in my garage. I cleaned it up with some sandpaper but I think this might have been the lowest of the lows on this project. It's fixable, I know it is but damn it sucks.

After a couple of nights off, I went back to the drivers side fender and started to redo it. I'm almost finished but it looks the way I was expecting. I'll post the results later on.

I did take my dad out for a spin in the car. It's fast and he had a big smile on his face. Upon my return, there was a pretty big puddle under the car. Power steering fluid. It looks like my high pressure power steering line split and ruptured. They were used though.

When it rains it pours, right?

[White325is]

Damn man, I feel your pain on the paint. I've been through it and dealing with it right now.
I hope it turns out in the end for you.

[Simon S]

Ouch on the paint work man..

Well - you're hell-bent on perfection - that's fer true.

318 huh? Nice sleeper ya got there.

[TrentW]

Hang in there man. I feel your pain.

[ahriley91]

That sucks. But this is still one of the best e30's of all time.

[jackbenny]

Thanks guys. The driver fender came out pretty good and I started on the passenger door yesterday. It seems to be going well. I'll try and get some pictures posted tonight.

[silence]

Looking good. Let me know if you need a ps delete to fix your puddling issue ;)

[dude8383]

Thats what I call determination right there. I would have probably gone bonkers if that would have happened to me.

Love the 318is badge, I need to mount mine back on!!!

[jackbenny]

Looking good. Let me know if you need a ps delete to fix your puddling issue ;)

NEVER!!! j/k Ok that's option B and I have considered it. but i do like my power steering. :D

[Chrisv006]

Please post pictures of a good outcome...

Im about to roll my car out of the garage for the first time and commence wet sanding/polishing the new paint...which was also done not in a booth...

*cringe...

[jackbenny]

Please post pictures of a good outcome...

Im about to roll my car out of the garage for the first time and commence wet sanding/polishing the new paint...which was also done not in a booth...

*cringe...

I have some pictures from this weekend that i'll try and upload tonight. The weekend was met with moderate success.

[jackbenny]

I began work on fixing the swirls that were still present on the driver's side fender.

I wasn't going to use the large polisher because of what happened on the passenger fender. The first time I did the driver's fender, I used a 3 inch pad on the end of my cordless drill. Why? It was cordless and had pretty good speed control so I could refine my technique. The downside? It ate through the batteries like crazy. Rather than beat up my good cordless drill, I picked up a corded drill that had a fairly low RPM max speed. This allowed me to get the paint hot consistently and go from this:



to this:



Now that I had a technique that I was comfortable with, I finished up the panel.





It's not perfect, though I think I put too high expectations for my capability. Let's face it, I'm not painting and buffing a riddler award winning car here and I'm doing this in the harshest light possible. In the sun, it should look quite nice.

All these panels thus far have been tackled more than once. I now needed to try and get a sanded panel to a state I was satisfied with all at once. I nominated the passenger door and since it gave now objection, the preparation began in earnest.



I started off with a combination of a pretty rough 3M pad and then used my orange pad with a medium cut. My first pass at the top of the door, seemed to yield satisfactory results.



Here the top is polished with step one while the rest of the door is still wet sanded with 2000 grit.



The reflection is pretty straight but still hazy. I would go through a fine cut cleaner, swirl remover, and machine glaze before waxing.





Not the greatest picture but you get the point. This is fully polished without wax. There is some waviness but further sanding would have made the clear coat much too thin.

I decided I needed a break from the car so I polished the tail lights and the C-Pillar trim.



I had started sanding the lamp housings a while back and thought it would be a good time to finish it off.

The process was the same but instead of using the drill, I used my drill press and moved the part instead of vice versa. It made a mess, but I was pleased with the results.



Things have gotten a bit ... messy.

I decided to install one to see how it looked.





This made me feel good. These were some pretty ragged lenses and I think they turned out much better than I thought they would. To be honest, I didn't think this experiment would work and I would have to source some new ones. Lucky me.

I still have the c-pillar trim to put back together and it's been quite uncooperative thus far. I'll start the passenger rear quarter next but that may not happen until this weekend.