I thought I'd post up a little bit about how I take dead paint and bring some life back to it. The subject today is my 53 Chrysler Town and Country. It had a respray over 25 years ago and has been neglected ever since. Now that she is driving it's time to give her a little shine. I've done this on 2 other cars in the past and I really love the results. Some may call it fake patina but IMO it looks a hell of a lot better than dead paint. WARNING: If you choose to try this method yourself you WILL lose paint and burn through all over the place. First lets look at what we are starting with. Not bad looking overall for a daily driver. Note the orange peel from the respray and how flat and ugly it looks.
It looks like a gentle color sanding and some serious detail work would make it shine prett good but what do you have in mind?
The tools of the trade. 600 and 1200 3M wet/dry paper and a rubber sanding block that conforms to the shape you are working with. 3M Heavy cut and regular cut rubbing compound and a cleaner wax. I prefer paste myself. A polishing machine with velcro adapter for buffing pads (HF for ~$40). Wool buffing pad for the compounding. Get 2 of them because they are doing the grunt work and will get torn up. Foam buffing pads by 3M. They have an egg crate look to them and work best IMO. But the yellow HF ones will do fine as well. Microfiber towels. You can get a shitload from Costco for around $15. Will last you forever. Not shown is a bucket and dish soap. A few (FEW) drops of dish soap in a bucket of water will help lubricate the sandpaper when cutting the paint. First thing I like to do is determine the quality of the paint you are working with. If it's original paint then you know it was done right. If it was a respray I like to look at the details of the job and decide the level of care taken. How much paint is on there to work with? Look at the trim, was it removed or taped off for the respray? How about the door jams? Door handles? Taillights, etc? This will help me decide if corners were cut when it was worked on or if it was done right. For this wagon, it was a shoddy job at best. Including finding pieces of aluminum tape that were used to cover rust holes and shot over! Door handles, trim, lights, bumpers and the rest were all taped off. Rear door needs more sanding as you can see by the remaining orange peel and shine left behind. Remember, you can always take off more, it's kinda tough to put it back on though! Rear fender was very thin from the start so I burned through like crazy. But that was fine with me.
I'm guessing turn the throttle up on the buffer and go to town. If you burn through so be it. Can't wait to see whatcha got going on.
After sanding it's time for the fun part! I tried to match the burn through on each side so it was a little more balanced. The passenger side looked like it had more paint on it but it was actually way thinner. First a wool buffer with Heavy Cut Compound, then regular cut followed by thoroughly washing the car down to remove the compounds. Here's the initial result. Damn this is a messy job! But so worth it to me.
The term "turd" cannot properly be applied to any T&C, except the mini-vans. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.
Myth Busters actually polished a turd... I Hand Rubbed my Studee 4 times with Turtle Wax fine polishing cream. Brought the shine back, after it having been neglected by previous owners, and stored outside. The paint had been done in the late 80s. ...
Next I took the cleaner wax and put it on the foam pad and buffed it into the paint a low speed. Followed by microfibering the whole thing a few times. And here's the end result! I'm going to hit the roof again because it's still a little hazy. All in all it took me about a week of total work to get it to this point. I just worked a section at a time so I wasn't overwhelmed. All the little trim pieces that are painted will get handled in the not too distant future. They acutally have to come off because the buffer won't get to them. I'll do the rear fenders a little more when I have them off for rust repairs to the floors. All in all I love the way it came out. I better get used to people asking me when I'm going to paint it! NAES
man i like it. looks great. also i like the NOT so hamb friendly veeeee duuub bus in the back ground to!!!
Thanks for the props everyone. It's been a really fun build and I really like the American car community. People are very friendly with minimal bad attitudes being thrown around. Same can't be said for some other car scenes. sobpunx, no crap being thrown by me. I know the look doesn't suit all tastes. 32coupe, I did the same thing to the bus in the background pic. And another one before that, which I removed 3 layers of respray to get to the OG paint! Took 6 months working almost daily. Never again.
Looked at the before photos...think you could have saved the paint job. Instead it looks like someone was let loose with a big polisher,and didn't know how to use it. Oh yeah, and by the way, that doesn't look like a turd you were polishing. It actually looked like a really cool car.
Damn, and all these years i've tried to avoid cut throughs and burns, even swirl marks. WTF was i thinking???????
It'll sure wash up easier. I had a '52 Chevy 2-door sedan that had multiple primered areas on it. I wet sanded and buffed as you did. Came out shiny...even the primer. Looked better than being DUUUUUUULLLLLLL imo. Don't get me wrong...not dis'n flat finishes...just old DUUUUUUULLLLLL paint...lol. I'd be tempted to primer the spots where you went through...then it'd be only 2-tone instead of multi-tone. Just sayin'.
yea just repaint it, i know some people like the see through prime, but it just looks better one solid color, but thats just me.
Its all good with me if you like it but I love the car and it would look better to me painted. Normal Norman
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