A buddy of mine came to me about his 1997 Black Acura Integra, He wanted it to have a Tru Shine before the Big Import Alliance meet in ATL GA. So he let me have it for a couple of days so I could take of everything and get this puppy gleaming. Lets get started!

I began the detail with an inspection of the paint surface. I know the previous owner had the car buffed all the time so I was a little worried about how thin the paint was. I pulled out my Highline meter II Paint thickness gauge and began to walk around the car testing each panel. I knew the Hood and Trunk had recently been painted so I wasn't surprised with the results that I got.

The hood was healthy


but all the original paint panels were pretty low.





The trunk is going to be wet sanded because of some Extreme orange peel (you see in some pics below)



I recorded all of the information from each panel and any other info that the owner needed to know about. such as how thin the paint on the roof was, about 2.4 mils :nervous2:




So I sprayed off all of this crazy pollen that was caked on everything. I washed the car with Dawn Dish detergent to strip ANY wax that was on the car off. I wanted a pure paint surface for the polish.

I used:
Single bucket Method
Dawn Dish Detergent (to strip off ALL wax for a pure paint surface)
Grit Guard
100% Sheep skin wash mitt
and Dried using a Detailed image reTHICKulous MF towel
and Clayed with Auto magic blue fine clay





the wheels were cleaned with

Chemical Guys "Diablo Wheel Gel" 1:3 dilution ratio
EZ Detail brush

I sprayed it on and let it set for 10-15 min on each wheel and the scrubbed it with my EZ Detail brush. and It worked amazingly, I love this stuff





You can really tell how bad the trunk was orange peeled



along with the paint the tail lights were just as dull and swirled up and needed some lovin too.



I brought the Car inside and began to tape off the trunk and get to wet sanding







I started dry sanding with P1500 Eagle Yellow Super-Tack with a foam interface pad and followed it up with P3000 Eagle Buflex pads.





Smooth as a baby's butt! bye Bye oranges!



I buffed it out using:
Harbor freight Rotary buffer
Gloss It 3" foam backing plate
Lake country purple foamed wool pad
Meguiars M105 compund






This is just after M105/PFW pad







Continued.....

I hit the taillights with M105/ 4" Orange LC pad with the GlossIt 3" BP







Now for the Paint Correction
I used:
Flex 3401
Cyan Hydro tech pad
with M105/M205










I finished the car and topped it with a coat of Black Fire Wet Diamond
So Anyways now for the Final Sun Shots!!!!

 

great job man! makes me want to go get my car show ready

 

Looks awesome. I love a shiny black car.

 

looks good! after clay bar do you rewash it again with soap? it wouldnt contaminate would it?

 

no, you just wash the car, then clay bar it with some lube (detail spray, water with a drop of soap) and then wipe it off. you can do it while the car is still wet too before you dry it off.

 

damn nice step by step subscribe

 

Very impressive

 

Looks so awesome. But, do I spy a bit of orange peel in that 4th to last pic on the driver rear 1/4 panel?

Also why do you use different rotary buffers for the wet sanding vs. the paint correction?

 

tomsEF's car =

 

I have a few different polishers, when removing wetsand marks you need a lot of cut and speed, So I use the Rotary buffer to compund out the heavy scratches and then Polish it out via the FLEX 3401

The Flex 3401 is a Forced Rotation Orbital polisher which will not leave swirls or holograms, so i like to finish up with the Orbital so when its pulled into sunlight there aren't any Swirls! thanks
-Eric

 

wow looks really good, kind of modifates me to to do this to mine, i hate swirl marks

 

wow great job!! love the step by step.

 

Nice work! At what point would you consider paint 'too thin' to buff?

 

i think the diablo gel had a lot of hype built up for it. great smell though. i have it too and used the same strength and you have it. you tried to cut it a little less?

 

when I buff and polish I only remove about 4 microns, most swirls and light scratches are 3-4 microns deep, and you need about 30-40 microns of clear coat to do its just protecting from the sun. 25 microns equal 1 mil so a 4.0 mil paint thickness is average. the roof on this integra was 2.6, so 100 microns is 4.0 mils. thats alot of clear coat missing. you would need to be real careful and your probably going to get premature clear coat failure.

I love this stuff, it cleans the wheels safely and wont harm any type of wheel. there have been a couple of wheels were it wont clean all the REALLY bad stuff off. but 90% it does, Wheel bright AKA acid or any other type of alkaline cleaners can harm the finish on wheels so I am not a fan of that. I would like to check out P21s Wheel gel too.

 

Wish you were in the Atlanta area. I am wanting to get my Si properly detailed....

 

Nice work on the trunk!

 

thats some awesome work

 

Amen.

 

i thought i had already replied to this thread, but guess not.

great work and its also refreshing to see a detailer with a paint thickness meter.

i cant stand seeing all these detailers on the internet get 100% correction knowing full well they're just shortening the lifespan of the paint just to get 100% correction.

 

nice work and great write up

 

Great work Tru shine... I always check out your details on Autopia!

 

Thanks, do you ever post write ups on there?