Here’s where we’re at so far with this car. I’ve actually washed it. I did a prep wash with Dr. Beasley’s Prep Wash, clayed it, and then I’ve machine polished all of the paint except for this side of the hood. And so that’s what I’m going to do next. I’m just going to polish that. And I thought I would share a couple tips on how to work on these old 1930s and 1940s coupes. They have very curved hoods, very curved fenders. And if you’re not sure how to tackle one and say someone brings you a car like this or you buy a car like this and you’re wondering how do you go about machine polishing it, let me just share a couple tips first before we get to the coating.
Why Use Gear-Driven Tools for Curved Panels
So one of the things I like to do is, a lot of people already know this, is I like to use gear-driven tools. OK, this is an eight-millimeter gear-driven tool. And the reason why is because with all these curves, if you’re using any kind of free-spinning tool, so a Porter Cable or a 15-millimeter, 25-millimeter, 12-millimeter, but it’s a free-spinning tool—I don’t got one next to me—but when you take and you spin the pad, it just spins freely. It’s going to stall out all over the place. It’s going to take a long time. So, you know, that’s why I like the gear-driven.
This is actually called the Supa Beast, and what I’ve done to get into these curved panels is I showed this trick last, um, two weeks ago. It was when we did the video on buffing out intricate areas. Remember that? And I showed how to take a piece of coarse sandpaper and trim down and shape your own foam pads. So I’ve already done that. I’ve taken and trimmed this Dr. Beasley 6.5-inch foam polishing pad down. And the reason I’m doing that is because I’m going to be pushing this into some curves, and I want to get some of the backing of the foam pad away so I have just nothing but pure soft foam spinning against the paint.
Opening the Hood for Better Access
OK, so the first thing I would do is, and Yancy, to your point earlier about “they don’t make cars like this,” check this out. Here’s the beautiful front grille. Here’s how you open the hood. It’s just right there. It’s part of the trim itself. And then this just pops up like that. And then what I do is I always take the Ego nozzle, the nozzle off my Ego leaf blower, and just find a safe place to set this to stabilize it. OK, like that. That way it doesn’t hit you. Well, that way I can push down on the hood, and it won’t slam on me.
Tackling Difficult Curves
And so then the area that I want to show is this area right here, which is complicated to get to if you don’t open the hood because you’ve got this curved fender here but also to get in here and get this fender close to where the engine compartment is. So if you ever get asked to work on one of these, this is how I do it. And I also do this on the trunk lid. I pop open the trunk lid and just bring the back of the trunk lid up higher to me to make it easier to buff out.
Now, I did a test spot on this, and for the water spot etchings, I had to use the NSP 95 to actually remove those, eliminate those. But after that, the rest of the car I was able to polish out with the NSP 45, which is a fine-cut polish, foam polishing pad, and, of course, I’m using the Super Beast.
Polishing the Hood and Removing Water Spots
OK, so I’m just going to go ahead and dab this down here, here, here. Grab some of that, dab it down here. And I’m actually gonna grab this edge and stick that right in here. And this is what I’m talking about. This area right here with the free-spinning tool would be very hard. So let me go ahead and show you how I buff this out.
I’m running this right next to this trim over the pinstripe. It’s a polishing pattern, a fine-cut polish. It’s not gonna hurt the pinstripe. What it is gonna do is it’s going to remove all those water spots that are in the paint next to the pinstripe. So then after I buff out this section and I do the top of the hood after I reclose the hood, now I’m going to come and get this area. I’m going to go into this area right here.
And again, this is where a free-spinning tool would just completely bog out. Even if you used a smaller pad on a free-spinning tool, you’d really be hard-pressed to maintain pad rotation and pad oscillation. And at best, you could get the swirls and scratches out, in this case, water spots. Then up here, I run it over the trim because that’ll brighten this up, too. Like that. A lot of times, you can actually see a gray come off—that’s the tarnish. OK? So, you know you’ve brightened it, you’ve removed something that was dulling it.
Wiping Down After Polishing
OK, clean microfiber towel. The one thing we didn’t get out… you know, it was on my to-do list before you got here, to get the towels out. Luckily for me, I got a lot of towels. So, Yancy, kind of the reason I wanted to point this out was just because a lot of people have never worked on a car like this. I mean, it’s a really cool car. And if you’re a professional detailer or if you’re starting out, or if you’re a car enthusiast and you buy one of these things, there’s just a couple of tips on how to approach buffing out all these curves.
Using Gear-Driven Tools for Efficiency
One of those technique tips is to use a gear-driven orbital polisher instead of a free-spinning polisher, so you don’t waste any time with pad stalling. And then, I’ll show you the other thing I always do. While the hood’s open, get in here because now you can get right into this panel of the fender because otherwise, this would be in the way, and you actually couldn’t really get all the way in there. So, kind of like that. Then, once you get that section done, you could, of course, either continue buffing out the fender or close the hood and finish up the fender. And the same thing, get all the way down here, and again, hit all the brightwork. I even hit the headlights.
Achieving a Full Shine
When detailing cars, one of the big-picture ideas is to create bling—to make the whole thing shiny. Polish the glass, polish the trim, polish the paint. And then when you stand back, the whole thing will just have a blinding shine because everything’s had a pad spinning against it with some sort of hopefully great abrasive technology. Make sense?
Yancy: Makes perfect sense.
Mike: So, anyway, that’s how I tackled this car. Same kind of thing in the back. I opened up the trunk lid, propped it up, and that just allowed me to work easier but also to get around the curves of the fenders. So, these cars are very curvy. There are a couple of techniques that will help you—open everything up and then use a gear-driven tool.
Polishing the Hood Before Applying the Coating
Mike: OK, and now we’re going to talk about… Yes. Oh, OK, so now that I’ve shared a couple of tips and techniques on how to approach these curvy, curvy coupes like this, I still need to polish out this half of the hood before I put the coating on. So, I’m gonna polish this out, and then when I’m done—this will just take a second here—I’ll explain one of the benefits of the NSP primers.
OK, so let me polish this out real quick. I’m doing this whole hood here. And those three pea-sized drops have completely given me a complete film of abrasive technology. So I’ve got lubrication, and I’ve got the microspheres, and the foam pad oscillating. Everything’s working for me to remove the water spots. Then it’s just a matter of making uniform, overlapping section passes. I’m probably applying about 10 pounds of pressure here initially because all I want to do is cut the paint, I want to abrade it, and that levels it. What it does is visually remove the water spots—I’m leveling the paint.
The Art of Polishing Paint
OK, so I’ve made two solid passes there, pushing fairly hard. Now I’m going to come back, and I’m going to use that term I like, called “schmoo.” Schmoo. Because I did that kind of in this section, this section, and that section. Now I’m going to schmoo the whole thing over with two or three just nice, softer passes.
Yancy: So, about half the pressure that you were using before, or less?
Mike: One second. That was one. This is two. So this would be a total of four solid passes over this section. I’ll do one more. OK, now just slight pressure. Slight pressure. You know, I always tell people, polishing paint is an art form. It is not a grinding process. We add the human elements of care and passion.
The Human Element of Detailing
In fact, I was just speaking to a guy on the phone about working on his brand-new BMW. And that’s one of the things I explained to him. I said, it’s not just taking your car, washing it, polishing it, and coating it. You know, I have to look at what I’m doing. I have to focus on the task, and I put a part of myself into your car so I don’t make a mistake on your brand-new car’s paint job. And that costs money. You know, it’s not cheap. And the other option is to find someone who doesn’t care, who looks at it as a mechanical process and just slams out his work—and you get what you pay for. It won’t look good, it won’t last long. You know that saying, “Quality work isn’t cheap, and cheap work isn’t quality.”
OK, so there, I just wiped it off. You can see how easy that was to wipe off. Very, very easy. And we have basically a flawless orange clear coat finish.
Benefits of Dr. Beasley’s NSP Primers
Mike: Now, the cool thing about the Dr. Beasley’s NSP primers is we don’t have to use a panel wipe. We can go right to the coating. There will be no issues with bonding with the coating and the paint because we used NSP nanogel technology. And that’s just a benefit. So, less towels, less products. Plus, on softer paints, all you seasoned professionals will know what I’m talking about when I tell you that if you’re working on softer paint and you go to use a panel wipe, you run a real risk of marring the paint. And marring is the kind, gentle word for scratching. So, there’s a distinct benefit to the NSP primers.
Starting the Two-Part Nano-Resin Pro Coating System
OK, so this is the Paint Coating Builder. This is a two-part system. Normally, what I like to do is put a mist onto the finish, but I also like to dampen my pad. There’s a reason for that. If I take a dry pad and try to spread something wet down, the dryness absorbs the wetness, and it doesn’t spread very well. So, you always want to dampen whatever applicator you’re using first, just so you don’t fight yourself.
OK, so then you apply this just using your basic crosshatch pattern. And one of the cool things about this—and anybody that’s used this can back me up on this—is just after initial application, I can really feel the paint become slippery. OK, very silky feeling.
Applying the Paint Coating Builder
OK, there we go. So, there’s three basic section passes. And you want to wait about two to three minutes. Now, the Nano Pro kit comes with one of these microfiber applicators—they’re called coating savers made by Autofiber. Can you just hold it right there so I can zoom in? And one of the things I do is I train people in our classes. Because right now, we’re getting the gray and red ones. That could change. But I use the gray for the Paint Coating Builder and the red for the actual coating.
Yancy: Red, like stop sign, emergency, more important.
Mike: Yeah, red is more important. So, this is the more important color. That way, I color code it, so I don’t mix up which coating’s going on which side. Now, of course, you could buy extra applicator pads and avoid the whole problem, but for a lot of people, you can use the same applicator to do the two-part process. Just make sure you have a method in your brain to remember which product you’re putting on which side because if the products are clear, you’re not gonna be able to tell just by looking at the applicator pad.
Wiping Off the Paint Coating Builder
OK, so then you wait two or three minutes. You just want to come back and use a clean microfiber towel. And I’ll just cover this—one of the things that’s so important is always to look at your towels and feel them with your hands. You want to make sure that they’re not contaminated.
Yancy: You remember your old saying?
Mike: Oh yeah, I’ve been quoting this for eons. It goes like this: “It takes hours to buff out a car. It takes seconds to put a scratch in because your towel was contaminated.” So, I keep tweezers around, and I don’t see anything here because I keep my towels clean. But if I did, if I felt something, I could come down here and pick it out. So always keep a pair of tweezers in your garage or in your mobile detail van.
OK, so once it passes your inspection, visual and tactile, then you can fold it and go ahead and wipe this Paint Coating Builder off. And what this has done is already amped up the clarity of the clear coat, which is important because the clear coat is the window to the base coat. It’s made it very glossy, very slick, and it’s laid down a foundation that the next application, the next product, can actually bond to.
The Velcro Analogy for Bonding Coatings
My partner at Dr. Beasley’s, Chris Racana, he likes to use the Velcro analogy, which works pretty well. Velcro is basically hook and loop. So, imagine the Paint Coating Builder is the hook—I just laid that down—and now I’m going to take and apply the loop. And you know how strong that is. I mean, listen. Hear that? I’m watching you struggle with it. It’s that kind of stronger attachment, which is the idea behind this two-part system.
OK, so now that we’re ready to apply that, let me move everything over here.
Preparing the Applicator Pad for the Coating
OK, so the next thing to do, could you do me a favor? Over there on that table is my pipettes. The little plastic things. Thank you.
OK, the kit comes with two of these little pipettes, like an eyedropper. What you’re going to do is stick this in here, draw up or wick up some product, and then apply this right onto the applicator pad. And again, because this is the first time I’ve used this pad, it’s very, very dry. So, I want to put some extra product on here just so I have a dampened applicator pad.
Now, one of the unique characteristics about this coating is there are no solvents in it. It’s 100% solids. For that reason, I’m just going to do a traditional X pattern—two of them here. The reason for that is, as I start to apply this, I pick up more of the coating to spread it around versus just putting the applicator down and starting to spread it. But because it’s high solids, no solvents, it’s a very thick, resinous product, and it applies.
Applying the Nano-Resin Pro Coating
Mike: One of the technique tips I would share is you want to slow your hand motion down. If you try to go fast, your applicator’s just going to want to roll over on you. So this is a case where, remember that old saying, Yancy? “To go faster, slow down” or “Slow down to speed up.”
Yancy: Slow down to speed up.
Mike: Exactly. So then, again, this is just your basic crosshatch pattern. And just like most coatings on the market, it’s a good idea to do this four times. And the magic behind doing four overlapping passes is to ensure 100% coverage over the entire surface. So, there’s two, then for this coating the flash time is about 30 seconds to a minute. There’s three.
Mike: Another technique tip, if you’re going to use these small block-style applicator pads, is actually to push it in the direction of the length of the block instead of like this. I’m not sure how to explain that, but it’s less likely to want to roll on you because of the length of it. OK, so there’s four uniform applications.
Ensuring Proper Coating Application
Mike: And in between when you’re not using this, it’s a good idea to always seal the bottle in case you tip it over. You don’t want your coating spilling all over your work cart or your workstation, workbench.
OK, then after about 30 seconds to a minute, it’s time to wipe off. Now, this is a sticky coating, so technique is everything. First of all, you want to use clean, uncontaminated, short-pile microfiber towels. This is the towel we sell on Dr. Beasley’s. I used to not really like rectangular-shaped towels, but since I’ve been using these, I’ve actually come to like them just because I’ve got a little bit more surface area to work with when you fold it four ways. And of course, just more towel—more bang for the buck.
Yancy: Think it’s been a minute?
Mike: Yeah, been more like 30 seconds. OK, so then what I’m gonna do—and I don’t know if you can get this—but can you get in on my hand? No? OK, I’m going to put that towel down flat, and look, I’m going to scrunch that up between my fingers. See that? OK. I’m not going to just hold it flat. I’m actually going to scrunch. And then, gentle, slow, overlapping, circular motions.
Removing Excess Coating and Preventing High Spots
Mike: If you just use this simple technique, it’ll make wiping this high-solids coating off really easy. OK, that’s one time. And just to visually look at this, I’ve got 95% of the coating off. Flip to the other side, scrunch it up, come back, and do a final wipe on it. And this is one of those coatings where it is vital that you do not leave any high spots. If you do not remove all the coating, you’re going to have to come back and compound this coating off. I’ll guarantee it.
So if you’re going to install coatings, you need to have a great handheld Strollfinder light. This is the one from Lake Country Power Tools. And just— a lot of people do this, but don’t be that person. Hold it about a foot and a half up, OK? Let it spread some of that light out. And come back and just inspect your work. Make sure you’re not leaving any excess product behind. And if you find anything—any residue, any smears, any high spots, like there was one just right up here by the trim I didn’t wipe enough—come back and get all your edges. You can often have coating piled up in the edges, the body seams of a car, between panels.
You can often have coating piled up in the edges, the body seams of a car, between panels. And that is it. Then you want to let that cure for about three days, so only two hours. That’s how you use the Dr. Beasley’s Nano Resin Pro Ceramic Coating. And a couple of features about this, in case you wanna know, is this is a self-healing coating. OK, the product itself is made using elastomer ceramic resins, and they absorb scratches and self-level with time and exposure to sun.
Like, take the car and park it outside on a sunny day. Basically heat.
Yancy: Basically heat?
Mike: Yeah, you want heat. It’ll kind of reflow it. So, kind of a cool feature. You know, most people that own cars, they’re not as meticulous as others. They don’t inspect their towels or their wash mitts. And so, it’s easy to get light micromarring just from normal, everyday wear and tear. And so, if you park this outside on a sunny day, a lot of the shallow micromarring will actually disappear. So, self-healing coating.
This is also a super hydrophobic coating. This is designed to have a low-angle contact, which means even at a low angle, water’s just gonna want to run off and take the dirt with it, and also reduce any water spot problems. So, there’s some really cool features about this coating. And then it’s stated to last up to five years with proper care.
How to Properly Care for a Coated Car
So, you know, proper care means gentle washing. You know, Yancy, you and me together, I’ve probably shared more articles and videos on how to carefully wash a ceramic-coated car. And in my opinion, that starts out with using, instead of using a wash mitt, I show people to dunk about twelve clean, inspected towels in your wash bucket, use one on the roof, have a clean bucket for that to go into, because you’re done. You’re washing one panel with one towel. One for the hood, towel goes in the bucket. One for the fender, towel goes in the bucket.
By always switching to a clean, dry towel, you reduce the potential to mar the paint with dirt removed from one panel onto your wash mitt, then rubbed over another panel. That’s my best tip for taking care of a ceramic-coated car—use the multiple towel method.
Of course, use a quality car wash like the Dr. Beasley Ceramic Pro Wash. I agree with that. Ceramic body wash. When I have that over there for just to kind of show everything I use to take this car from zero to hero.
Using Dr. Beasley’s Prep Wash
Mike: Why don’t you work your way over there?
Yancy: Sure.
Mike: And it’s kind of like I mentioned before, you know, a lot of people, they know in order to coat a car, they gotta buy a coating, but it doesn’t start there. So, in this case, I did a waterless wash. And for this, I used the Dr. Beasley’s Prep Wash.
A little bit about Dr. Beasley’s Prep Wash: Jim Lafeber, the head chemist, owner, and founder of Dr. Beasley’s, he actually created this product after attending one of my three-day classes and watching me use a glass cleaner to wash a car. And what I did is I poured the glass cleaner into about three gallons of water and used that to do a waterless wash.
And you’re thinking, “Well, why would you do that, Mike?” Well, because when I’m doing a water prep wash like I did on this, the whole goal is to get the car clean. And so the problem I have with all these waterless washes on the market is, in most cases, they contain other ingredients to make it glossy, make it shiny, add ceramic, add wax. I don’t want to do that; I just want to get it clean. So I couldn’t find a waterless wash that just offered pure cleaning, so I used glass cleaner.
I figure if a glass cleaner will pull smoker’s film off glass or vinyl fog off glass, normal road dirt, road grime off glass, then it’ll clean the body. And, you know, since I’m going to buff it out, I wasn’t too worried about being careful. What I’m worried about is getting it really clean before I start the cleaning process.
Jim Lefebvre’s Inspiration for Prep Wash
So, Jim watched in horror as I did that, and he went back and formulated this. So he took all the ideas I had into making something do nothing but clean paint, leave nothing behind, just get it clean and do it safely. So that’s how I started this process out. You just held up Bead Hero.
Yancy: What’s that now? You’re talking about Bead Hero or the…
Mike: Oh no, Prep Wash. Yeah, you held up Bead Hero. Oh, I got the wrong product over here. Sorry about that. This comes in a 12-ounce bottle like this, but it also comes in gallons. And at Dr. Beasley’s, they provide pour-off spray bottles that you can mark and actually have hazard identification sections on the back to keep you OSHA compliant.
Cleaning Wheels and Tires with Prep Wash
So then, after that, by the way, I also used this on the wheels and tires. Look how nice those wheels and tires look.
Yancy: No, they’re nice.
Mike: So I hand-cleaned those with the Prep Wash. And then, in the NSP primer line, we’ve got the 150, the 95, and the 45. These also come in 32-ounce bottles, and we offer pour-off bottles for those. I did my test spot on the trunk lid, and again, you can watch that video on the Dr. Beasley’s Instagram page, and you can see the water spots that I took out. This was after washing the car. Those spots were in the coating, in the paint. But I didn’t want to do anything aggressive, so I just did a test spot with the NSP-95 and a light foam cutting pad. It’s the blue one we sell on the Dr. Beasley’s website on a Beast, and it completely obliterated them.
Preparing the Car for Coating
So, for all the areas with the water spots, I hit it with the 95, then I come back and re-polish the entire car with the 45 and a foam polishing pad like you saw me using up on the hood. And that got the car to where it was perfect and ready to coat. And then the next step was actually the Paint Coating Builder. And then the next step after that is the Nano Resin Pro.
Maintaining the Coating with Bead Hero
And to maintain this, I’m going to show the owner Bead Hero. In fact, I’m going to give him this bottle to take care of it, and I’m going to send him the link where he can buy that in a gallon and get the pour-off bottle to maintain this. Because once I do all the hard work, his job is real easy. All he has to do is wash this car once in a while, and he does wash this, and then use this spray-on, wipe-off product.
And me and Yancy just shot a video. Remember last weekend, we shot this video on Bead Hero. And wait till this video comes out. It’s amazing when you see what this will do to a car that’s had nothing done to it for years.
Anyway, that’s kind of the process.
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