One of my best friends restores old high end Mopars. This is actually the last car he's doing so I was very happy when he asked me to go over it before it is delivered to the customer.

The car was professionally painted by his business partner about 10 years ago. The car sat in a garage as a shell uncovered in a guys garage till last year. My friend bought the car, finished the restoration and sold it. The paint felt like 150 grit sand paper. It had a tremendous amount of contamination, blue over spray from something and oxidized paint.



The car got the normal presoak via the Foammaster II w/ Dawn/APC+/Adams Car Shampoo. The car had dirt in every crevice imaginable. It was one of the longest washes I've done.



I started claying the car with Meguiars aggressive clay. It was working but was taking forever. At the pace I was going it would have taken probably 6-7 hours to clay the whole thing. This is a pic of a 1'x1' section on the hood. You can see how wrecked the clay is and the contaminants in the detail spray puddled on the hood.



I picked up a Speedy Prep Dx pad to expedite the decon process. It was definitely worth the money.




The Dx pad made quick work of the above surface bonded contaminates.



After decon the paint looked better but it still had oxidation on it. The car has Dupont clear on it and according to the painter it was a medium-hard clear. I decided to try D300 with a Meg's MF finishing disc on the Rupes 21. The combo did a great job of correcting the paint and finished down great.






It was damn near impossible to photograph this car because of the color. It's hard to see from the pics but the after pics are sharper and show a lot more detail of the lights above. This was after the compounding step

Before


After


The left side of the hood is before and the right side is after


This is after the M205 and black pad.

 

After talking to Jeff he talked me into jeweling the paint. My arms were ready to fall off after this step. Here are some reflection shots. Direct shots proved to be useless.





I got the car done about 7pm and grabbed some quick pics before the sun went down.















The car is getting the stripe out on it this week and a few other little things. After those things are done I will get it a last once over and put some BFWD on it.

Thanks for looking.

J

 

Looks clear and glossy nice work, and the Nanoskin clay alternatives are such a time saver good choice

 

Great work as always!

 

Thanks AWD. My friend was very happy with it. It's a shame this is the last car he is doing, it's an end to an era IMO. I've been very fortunate to be around some of the rarest Mopars ever built.

I don't know what I would have done without the Dx speedy prep pad. I don't know if I would use it on a car with average contaminants but it was a live saver on this one, I might have to check out one of their wash mitts or towels.

 

Thanks man!

 

Jason, what did you end up jeweling her with? PO85RD ??

Car looks great man.

 

Thanks! Yeah I used the 85RD. I should have jeweled with the PC and not the Rupes. The Rupes get heavy after a while.

 

Lmao. Definitely use your PC next time.

I used to jewel 85RD with my makita. Got a great arm workout but it got old after awhile. Great results though.

 

My brother in law got me a Festool Shinex to try out. Really the only reason I wanted it is to try and jewel with it on some junk panels. I've read mixed reviews about if there is any benefit to using a rotary for jeweling. Basically its just something else I want to try and learn how to do.

 

Looks great, I love the 2nd gen chargers. I think that's actually a '69, just FYI.

 

Crap. I just texted him. You are correct sir.

Good catch!

 

Turned out great!

Agreed on the difficulty of photographing that color, nearly IMPOSSIBLE to get a nice 50/50!

 

Thanks Nick!

 

Nice job on the correction. I've been around Mopars all my life with some of the rarest in my family as well. They're definitely one of a kind and mopar experts are almost non existent

 

I agree. It's amazing how much info my friend knows about them. He won OE Gold at the Mopar Nat's four or five times in a row which from what I have been told has never been done before. Probably the rarest car he did was a 1 of 2 or 1 of 4(I can't remember)black Superbird.

I about fell over when he told me how much a NOS Hemi oil filter costs.