Restoration of a '92 V6 LE

[cmjohnson]

Oh yeah. The basecoat is DuPont G9900 Super Black ChromaBase (four coats) and the clearcoat is HB Body 495 MS Rapid (four coats) and as of right now, only the hood has been wet sanded and polished, but not
yet FULLY polished.

My goal is simply to polish at least one panel or door per day. I don't need to do two, but at least one a day. Then it won't be long before the job's done.

You can see from the last shot of the hood reflections that there's a great deal of potential for this finish.

CJ

[EvoFire]

Yeah it looks really nice... And you have a lot of coats of paint to work with too lol

[CharmCityES]

wow its really coming along well man! i cant wait to see the results!

[Mazeraski]

That looks absolutely brilliant. Very impressed with all the hard work you have put into this, and the results thus far are amazing. Keep it up

[Tuner571]

That looks awsome man, great work!

[cmjohnson]

The hood's done, and so's the roof. I've set a very reasonable goal of getting ONE body panel
sanded smooth and polished to perfection per day. Tomorrow, it's the trunk lid's turn, which will give
me plenty of extra time to go back and fine-tune anything I might have missed on the roof or trunk.

I can truthfully say that the trunk and roof have a smooth gloss to them that I've only seen on show cars before. But that's what you sort of expect when you wet sand down to 2000 grit and then buff out with
the finest buffing compounds.


CJ

[BlueFusion6851]

You the man! Keep it up

[CamReddy]

just in response to "maybe this has never been done before." i could be the pioneer, being that i completely stripped my 93 camry of all badges and trim. then i fully filled any dents, sanded, primed, painted, cleared with all brand new materials. then i wet sanded and buffed to perfection. with a little help from my dad who was in paint for 20 years, im only 18. this was august 2007, so cj may be the most recent... but my paint is still too new to wax and it looks amazing.

you guys can check out my profile pictures if you would like to see some of my paint work... thanks

nice job so far Cj

[xtremeskier97]

Originally Posted by CamReddy

just in response to "maybe this has never been done before." i could be the pioneer, being that i completely stripped my 93 camry of all badges and trim. then i fully filled any dents, sanded, primed, painted, cleared with all brand new materials. then i wet sanded and buffed to perfection. with a little help from my dad who was in paint for 20 years, im only 18. this was august 2007, so cj may be the most recent... but my paint is still too new to wax and it looks amazing.

you guys can check out my profile pictures if you would like to see some of my paint work... thanks

nice job so far Cj

You have no pictures in your profile.

[cmjohnson]

I'm glad to know I'm not a pioneer in Camry restoration!

Yeah, restoration is the right word. I've already gone shopping for some quotes on getting the
interior restored to as new as well. It's not cheap! Maybe I can find an upholstery class at a local
college and either offer my car interior as a class project or just take the class myself!


But later...first, I've got to get the paint work completed.

I've pretty much abandoned my commitment to work on one body panel per day. I don't have a
specific schedule anymore except that I will work on it for a few hours every day. I refuse to rush the
wet sanding and polishing operations, because I want a truly noteworthy finish. That won't happen
by rushing any part of the job.

A minor irritant has cropped up: There's a patch on the hood that just doesn't want to polish up to the
same level as the rest of it. Same paint, same clearcoat, I'm not even close to sanding or buffing
through the clearcoat, it just seems to resist being polished to the same level. It's like the finish has
gone so hard that the polishing compounds aren't aggressive enough to polish in that spot.

The finish there is still GOOD, but it's not GREAT like the rest of the panel.

I've re-sanded it with 2000 grit sandpaper and a hard block and found no trace of a non-flat surface,
so I'll go get some 2500 and some 3000 grit and use THEM, too, and then repolish with the best
compounds I can find. 3M or Meguiar's, and whatever type is best.

Generally I find that Meguiar's compounds work faster and leave a better finish than the equivalent 3M Finesse-it
compounds, but the 3M residue cleans up a LOT easier.


CJ

[cmjohnson]

I'll tell you right now: Black is the nightmare finish to work with! I'm starting to think I might have been
happier to leave it in primer!

Well, not really...but it's DEMANDING work and LITTLE FLAWS DO SHOW.


Back to work...


CJ

[Maim Menu]

How could I miss this thread?

But it needs more pictures!!

I did a lot of body work on my other camry and I enjoyed it, but it was indeed very demanding. I had never done it before but it came out good enough given the time and equipement I had and now I've got a friend that wants me to fix some dents on his volks. Learning things like that is priceless. I had planned to do it all during my two weeks vacation but never got time to do it perfect like yours. And then came across another camry deal I couldn't pass on. Another black car, go figure

This is a great thread, thank you and post pictures!!

[cmjohnson]

I sort of had an accident tonight.

Working on the trunk lid, I had less clearcoat to work with than I thought I did. WAY less, as it turns out,
and I got down to the grey primer in a spot that WILL be noticed.

So I sanded the area down (actually, the entire back surface of the trunk lid) which is what I was doing
anyway, mixed up some more black ChromaBase, masked off the rest of the back of the car quickly,
and shot the black.

See spot run. See spot go long!


Crap.


Try to sand out the run after it dries.

Crap, it ain't working. The finish is just too rubbery and rolls up like boogers.


Crap again.

Lacquer thinner. Check. Clean rags. Check. Solvent-resistant gloves. Check.

Wipe off fresh black paint using lacquer thinner on rags. Get it clean. Do not stop to
think that you're poisoning the uncured urethane paint with aggressive solvents. A ticking time bomb
waiting to go off under the new paint.

Apply a THIN layer of black. Looks good...until the swarm of bugs lands in it and they all decide to do the
backstroke for about 100 yards or so. (In bug yards...that's about an inch for you and me.)

Crap yet again.

Attempt to remove bug carcasses by sanding them out.

Crap, no dice. Same as last time. Gum instead of paint, doesn't sand well.

Lacquer rag time.

Really take some time trying to be sure the surface is totally clean and well prepped with
a pristine rag with fresh clean laccuer thinner. All the bugs in the area are dead from the
paint fumes by now so I don't have to worry about them.

I back off the gun settings to give a finer mist and a slower rate of transfer, to really have some
control and lay down a THIN coat of black.

I shoot it.

I step back, almost ready to declare success. Looks good.


Within 15 seconds...oh crap, crap, crap!!! MAJOR finish reaction, over a section about six inches long
and almost two inches wide. The "old" finish is bubbling up through the fresh black like some awful new
strain of cancer. More specifically, the reaction is down in the primer layers.


Fudgesickles!


I've seen ChromaBase react like that before but I'd forgotten about that. It doesn't like being shot over
urethane if that urethane is reasonably fresh and has a lot of solvents in it. Which I had just put into it
with my repeated attacks with a lacquer soaked rag.


There's no chance to salvage this with anything but a full sand-back on the trunk lid, all the way to the
primer if not even further, into the original paint. (Which is mostly still there.)


I figure it's set me back by at least five days.


But what the heck...I have no schedule to meet. I'm just taking all the time I need to do the job as well
as I know how. And though I can't pick up more lacquer thinner (I'm out, practically) until Monday, I can
still continue to work on the finish on the rest of the car.

This slows me down but won't stop progress.


CJ


Attempts to

[bballsk8er333]

suycks to hear, but the cars looking great...can you show what you mean when you said your back lid was messed?
cant believe i missed this thread either :S

[lgcongbach]

take more pictures men, even pics of the crappy progress ... We are all curious here ^_^

go John go John