Backstory
So I get a phone call from custom car builder Jeremy Miranda of mirandabuilt.com – Jeremy tells me they brought in a high dollar custom 1963 Impala, a super favorite car among customizers with a lot of mechanical problems from another shop. Basically, they’re playing Doctor and repairing the original damage to the car followed by the damaged caused by the other shop. Clean-up duty is what you call this type of work. Once the car was mechanically sound, Jeremy says looking at the car hurt his eyes. Why? Because it has a high-end, custom paint job with supper sport stripes ghost painted under the clearcoat except the paint looks absolutely horrible. The problem? Swirls and holograms!
What’s the difference between swirls and holograms?
Swirls are simply random scratches inflicted into a car’s paint finish by normal wear-n-tear, usually caused by the contaminated things we touch the paint with.
Swirls are caused by the three common ways we all touch paint:
1: We wash our cars and over time our wash mitts become contaminated, and the particles embedded int the fibers put swirls and scratches into the paint.
2: Our drying towels become contaminated so when we remove water off our freshly washed car, particles embedded in our drying towels put swirls and scratches into the paint.
3: Our wiping microfiber towels become contaminated so anytime we wipe something off the paint, for example a spray detailer, car wax, etc. our microfiber towels put swirls and scratches into the paint.
Holograms, on the other hand are a distinct and specific scratch pattern imparted into the paint by the misuse of a rotary polisher. In most cases, the person doing the machine buffing is using a wool pad on a rotary polisher and all too often, they are also using cheap compounds and/or polishes that use old school, antiquated abrasive technology.
The results? The fibers from the wool pad install swirl scratches into the paint AND the cheap abrasive technology also instill its own swirl scratches into the paint. These leaves DEEP hologram scratches in the clear coat. These scratches are not only ugly to look at but they cloud the clear coat hiding or masking the beautiful custom paint job underneath.
How do you remove swirls and holograms?
Simple, you re-polish the entire car only this time using the best abrasive technology, high quality wool pads and proper technique.
How do you keep your car’s clear coat finish scratch and swirl-free?
More simple, keep the three things we all use to touch our car’s paint (wash mitts, drying towels and microfiber wiping towels) from becoming contaminated. Wash them regularly. Most important, before using ANY of these things to wash, dry or apply and remove any products from your car’s delicate and and scratch-sensitive clear coat finish, visually and tactfully inspect these items. More on this in a future article.
Never quote a price without first seeing the car in person!
After speaking with Jeremy over the phone about this project, (his shop and thus the Impala are in Boynton Beach, Florida, I’m in Stuart, Florida, about 50 miles apart), I asked Jeremy if he could send me a few pictures of the car and also pictures of the paint so I could see how good or how bad the paint looked. The pictures he sent made the car and the paint look like everything was in good condition. Of course, it was cloudy outside when he took the pictures and all paint can look good under cloudy skies. In order to really see the true and accurate condition of any paint job, you need to look at the paint in bright overhead sunlight or use specialty swirl finder lights like the SCANGRIP brand of swirl finder lights.
For tips and techniques on how to correctly inspect car paint using bright overhead sunlight, check out my recent how-to article.
The pictures I was sent…
Below are the pictures I was sent. When looking at these pictures, I see a nice looking 1963 Impala SS Convertible with what looks like some minor dirt spots on the paint, like you would see after a light rain. Nothing serious and nothing a quick wipe-down with a spray detailer would fix. But I was wrong, super wrong.
In the below picture, you can see the sun trying to poke out from the clouds in the reflections in the paint on the hood and from this picture the paint doesn’t look bad at all. At least you don’t see what I’m going to show you a little further down this article. This is why it’s so important to inspect paint under SUNNY skies, not cloudy skies.
Dirt spots after a light rain
In the below picture you can see what I call dirt spots, which are simply small patches of dirt in a circular shape from either dirt in the air that is captured when it rains and lands on your car, or it was a light dirt film already on the car and rain drops landing on the car create little puddles that encapsulate the dirt on the car leaving round dirt spots. Either way, these are not serious and a careful wiping or washing of the car will remove them. But this is not the real problem. Under cloudy skies, you cannot see the real problem.
Lesson learned the hard way – yet again…
After looking at the pictures that were sent to me via text, I quoted Jeremy a price, which he agreed to and took the job
Ouch! This is going to hurt your eyes!
Upon arriving to the shop, the first thing I did was to look at the car and specifically, inspect the paint using the bright overhead LED lights. What I saw is a far cry from what the pictures I was sent showed. The paint on the Impala is HORRIBLY swirled-out and filled with holograms.
Hood frame-up shot
In this first picture, I capture the entire hood so you have context to know which panel we’re looking at because in the subsequent shots, I’m going to zoom in on the swirls, scratches and holograms reflecting light back towards the overhead light reflection onto the paint.
Now I’ll start to zoom in….
Ouch! This hurts my eyes!
No self-respecting detailer can look at the below shot without cringing! And the entire car looks like this, even the lowest portion of the side body panels. What this tells me is the last person that buffed out this car used a wool cutting pad on a rotary polisher and more than likely, a cheap compound. These swirl scratches are also DEEP as I will soon find out when I do my Test Spot.
Trunk lid frame-up shot
Now lets take a look at the trunk lid. Also notice by the time I took these before pictures, I had already taped-off and covered over the canvas cloth convertible top to prevent any compound or polish splatter from landing on the cloth top.
Now I’ll start to zoom in. You will see the same abundance of swirls, scratches and holograms throughout the finish.
Good grief! At least the last person that buffed out this car was thorough – they didn’t miss swirling out as single square inch of paint on this car. This has to rank in the top 10 worst cars I’ve ever had to re-polish to undo some other person’s hack-work.
Process
Here’s the process I used to remove all the swirls and holograms and restore a show car finish to this old 2-door Chevy.
Step 1: Waterless Prep Wash
Step 2: The baggie test – the paint was horribly contaminated with overspray paint.
Step 3: Clay the paint using a clay mitt.
Step 4: Perform a Test Spot
First Test Spot Results
The results from my Test Spot showed me that the swirls, scratches and holograms in the paint were DEEP. This means a few things,
1: Deep swirls and scratches are from the fibers of a wool pad and probably a worn-out wool pad, which is more aggressive than a new, clean wool pad. (like I use)
2: Deep swirls and scratches are likely from the person that buffed this car pushing hard and thus pushing the fibers and the abrasives deep into the paint as they buffed.
3: Deep swirls and scratches likely from what I call Caveman Abrasive Technology, that is old, antiquated abrasive technology that’s basically rocks in a bottle. This type of abrasive technology cuts DEEP into the paint.
I was disheartened to say the least upon discovering the swirls and scratches were deep.
After doing my first test spot using foam cutting pads on the FLEX BEAST, I found out that foam pads on a gear-driven orbital polisher were not going to be aggressive or powerful enough to remove the deepest scratches out of the paint and for this type of car, we’re aiming for 100% defect removal or show car detailing. This is a show car by the way.
Second Test Spot – Re-cut the paint using a wool pad and rotary polisher
It can seem counter productive when trying to remove holograms out of paint CAUSED by a rotary polisher and a wool pad by using a rotary polisher and a wool pad but sometimes it’s the only way, the fastest way and the most effective way.
The key difference is, when doing it right the second time, you MUST be using a quality wool pad, primarily it cannot be so used and worn out the fibers scour the paint. And you MUST use professional quality abrasive technology. When you use a quality wool pad and great abrasive technology, you’re able to remove the deeper swirls, scratches and holograms by LEVELING the paint surface and “yes” at the same time you will be leaving holograms back into the paint only this time they are SHALLOW and thus easily removed with a second polishing step using a foam pad, an orbital polisher and always great abrasive technology, which is what you get when you use Dr. Beasley’s NSP Primers.
Paint Correction Process
Step 5: Re-cut the paint using Dr. Beasley’s NSP 150, a LC wool cutting pad and the FLEX cordless PE-150.
Step 6: Polish the paint using Dr. Beasley’s NSP Z1, a foam polishing pad and the FLEX BEAST 8mm gear-drive orbital polisher.
Step 7: Seal the paint using Dr. Beasley’s Nano Resin Kit
Step 8: Top with Bead Hero and recommend to the owner to maintain all this hard work with Bead Hero.
Action shots
I was by myself for this project so no one around to take picture. I did set-up my tripod and took a few pictures just because I like to document that “yes” it was me there doing the work. It certainly didn’t do it on it’s own.
Spraying Dr. Beasley’s Prep Wash onto the paint as a clay lube and then mechanically decontaminating the paint using a clay mitt. My comment; this paint was SUPER contaminated. When doing the baggie test the paint felt like #40 grit sandpaper. I normally like to be as gentle as possible when claying paint so as not to instill any marring or worse, scratching, but I found myself pushing extremely hard on the clay mitt to remove the contamination off the paint, glass and trim. Whatever shop had this car before Jeremy’s shop rescued it – they really don’t know what they’re doing.
Topical Glass Polishing
As a general practice and because I grew up detailing cars in Oregon, where it rains a lot, my normal routine for any car I detail is to perform topical glass polishing to ensure any and all surface staining, water spots, road film or drizzle stains are removed from the glass. I clayed al the glass really hard to remove the contamination and then machine polished using a foam pad on the FLEX BEAST with the Dr. Beasley’s NSP GL Glass Polish.
Machine polishing glass ensures its perfectly clean and it also restores maximum gloss and shine to the glass so it will look just as good as the paint when I’m done.
Cutting hard
Once I dialed-in my process it was time to get busy. I had scheduled this job for one day and I was wrongly assuming the paint was in good condition. Now in order to get this job done I’m going to have to work fast.
What you see me doing here is called, picking up a bead or strip of product using the 10 @ 10 Technique, which we teach in all our car and boat detailing classes.
After you pick up the product and trap it under you pad, the next thing you do is spread the product over the area you want to buff and then start working the polisher over the surface. When working a large panel like on this car, you can move the polisher in a crosshatch pattern using overlapping passes. When working long thin panels, you run the polisher in the direction of the length of the panel.
Technique tip: Anytime you use painter’s tape to cover and protect areas on the car like you see how I’ve taped-off the fresh air grill, always use a low tack tape, burn the the tape and then when you remove the tape, pull it off slowly and and at a low angle.
Final results…
Here’s the final results after a multiple-step paint correction process followed by installing the Dr. Beasley’s Nano Resin Kit.
Everything I used…
I always like to place everything I use on a table in front of the project car to show what I used and what it takes to do this type of work. Notice how may foam pads are on the table? I count 7 foam polishing pads and two foam finishing pads. The reason I like to share how many foam pads I use is because most people don’t use enough foam pads when doing paint correction. As you use a foam pad, the pad becomes wet with product and this softens the pad. As the pad becomes wet and thus soft, it stops doing what it’s supposed to do – remove defects, so you are not buffing effectively. It’s also important when doing “show car detailing” to switch to a clean fresh pad often to ensure you’re working clean and get the best results possible. So keep this in mind, more pads are better.
For the major correction step, I used the Dr. Beasley’s NSP 150 is a fully inorganic heavy cut primer, engineered specifically to prime for ceramic nanocoating application. It removes deep scratches, builds thickness and lays a foundation for nanocoating. The NSP Z1 is a one-step correcting primer and 1+ year nanocoating. Designed to merge priming paintwork correction and ceramic coating into a single step, it contains a unique nanostructure resin formulated with TiO2, SiO2 and composite engineered abrasives to achieve results that otherwise require more time and effort. I like to use the Z1 as my finishing polish because it will do everything a NSP polish like the NSP 95 or NSP 45 will do plus leave behind ceramic coating. I’m going to coat over this so I know 100% for sure this car is protected and super glossy!
FLEX tools used are the FLEX cordless PE-15 rotary polisher and the FLEX Red BEAST Inside, which is a special edition of the original FLEX XC 3401 VRG. I detail almost every car and boat with these two tools.
Final thoughts…
If you detail for a business, either part time or full time, make it you new best practice to always personally inspect the car and the paint before quoting a price. You cannot count on another person’s opinion on what good condition is versus bad condition and you cannot always go by pictures of the car and/or paint.
This project was a lot of hard work. I didn’t start the paint correction steps until approximately 11:00am and I finished, with zero breaks), at 7:00pm – that’s 8 hours of non-stop work. I’m happy to say, with the help from great abrasive technology, I was able to remove all the swirls, scratches and holograms and restore a flawless, swirl-free show car finish, which is what a car like this deserves to stand out at any car show or cruise-in.
Hands-on Detailing Classes
Would you like to learn how to do show car detailing? Or any kind of detailing? I’m proud to say that our car and boat detailing classes are the MOST hands-on detailing classes on planet Earth. There are literally no chairs, no sitting and now PowerPoint presentations. Nothing wrong with academic detailing classes but I have found after teaching THOUSANDS of car and boat detailing classes, that the type of people that are interested in learning detailing, learn better by doing than sitting in a chair listenting to someone talk about detailing. If this describes you then click the link below to find out more information about our car and boat detailing classes.
What are you working on?
Besides detailing cars professionally, teaching classes on both car and boat detailing and writing articles and making videos sharing tips and techniques on these topics, I also love answering questions and helping others to success for their projects in their shop or garage. If you have any car or boat detailing questions, as well as glass polishing questions, feel free to reach out and I’ll do my best to help.
Mike Phillips – 760-515-0444 – Mike@drbeasleys.com
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