A slightly different car and all the better for it!
From here on, it's all Clark's text.
Enjoy!
It's been a while since we had an older car in and what a beauty it was!
Today with a value of circa £350,000 it also has a massive amount of sentimental value as it has been in the family since it was brand new, however it is no garage queen and actually does more annual miles than my Impreza
The car was booked in for an Enhancement Detail so after closely inspecting the car for anything to be avoided when washing I began with the wheels:
Wolf's Deironizer was applied and left for 5/10 minutes:
The wheels started to bleed almost instantly:
Agitating the product to get the best out of it with all the various brushes:
I started thinking back to when I spent nearly 2 days with a dremel on a set of very similar wheels on a 1965 Maserati a few years ago and thanked my lucky stars that these ones were in much better condition!
After a thorough rinse off:
APC (4:1) was then used to clean the tyres and arches:
Rinsing at low pressure:
The car was just a bit dusty so no real need for a pre-foam, using APC again I went round all the badges/grills etc...
...before washing with the 2 bucket method...
...and then thoroughly rinsed off:
The car was then moved inside for a bit of spot claying with Meguiars Mild Detailing Clay:
I then used the Black Baron to dry everything off and applied Swissvax Pneu to the tyres:
It looks real messy just now but it soon soaks in to leave a really nice finish, especially on larger profile tyres such as these:
I then turned my attention to the hood, firstly spraying Swissvax Leather Cleaner...
...then working small sections at a time with a Swissvax Leather Brush:
This removed a fair bit of grime and the difference was plain to see:
All cleaned up:
Nanolex Convertible Top Sealant was then applied and left to fully dry:
Water beading once fully dry:
Onto some paintwork polishing now
Some examples of the defects:
Being an Enhancement Detail I obviously wasn't after full correction but after initial tests, it quickly became apparant that I was going to have to use a fairly strong combination just to get an improvement in the finish - this paint was HARD, proper old school paint
Menzerna 3.02 with a LC Polishing Pad & the Makita @1800rpm's were the weapons of choice:
3.02 is still one of my favourite polishes and provided it's thoroughly worked you can use it as a one step product on most paints and produce a finish 99%equal to that of a dedicated finishing polish. As the paint was so hard on this Aston it finished down trail free very easily.
Correction wise, on the worst parts I'd say I got a 50/60% improvement and in best cases the paint was pretty much flawless.
An example of the 50/60% areas...
Before:
After:
And a few other random correction shots:
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
The number plates (these are the original ones) were quite dull so these were machined too.
Before:
After:
Tail lights before:
After:
There was a bit of dirt build up inside the lights so I removed these and gave them a thorough clean inside and out with Auto Finesse Tripple. I didn't appear to take an after pic from the same position but you'll see they're awfully shiny in the afters later on
Once polishing was done I used a lambs wool duster to remove any dust:
Rejuvenate was then used to prep the paint for waxing:
Spirit was the wax of choice to protect the paintwork:
With pretty much most of the exterior done, I turned my attention to the interior. The rear screen was quite dull and hazy so armed with some Poorboys Black Hole and a MF pad I started to make a big improvement.
Right side done, left side untouched:
All done:
The hood was then put down to make it a bit easier to see what I was doing on the interior. For a 42 year old car I was amazed to find the hood was electric!
A few bits were removed such as the mats and rear bench:
A Swissvax interior brush was then put to good use for dusting out all the nooks and crannies:
Followed by a thorugh hoover:
The leather was then carefully cleaned with Swissvax again, here you can see the passenger seat has been done with the drivers side still to do:
Door cards done too:
The pedals were cleaned up with some APC and a triple duty brush:
Leather was then fed with Swissvax Leather Milk:
Any Leather cleaner residue on the chrome work was removed with some IPA on a cotton bud:
Again using a cotton bud to clean round the gear stick:
Mats put back in after being cleaned and then protected with Nanolex:
Interior complete:
With the roof put back up I cleaned up the chrome parts with Auto Finesse Tripple...
...And polished up the grill with Swissvax Metal Polish:
It goes without saying that on a car like this I could spend several hundred hours if I was let loose but over 2 days I had to make sure everything on the car was done in the time provided, as a result some parts maybe aren't as detailed as some would like but if there are any questions then fire away :thumb:
Here's the result after 2 long days, it was dark by the time I'd finished so unfortunately it's only inside shots:
Thanks for looking
And great work guys 