Since I haven't been driving the camaro, or paying that much attention to it as of late, the paint has really taken a down turn. Plus, with women driving it for the past couple of years, its a wonder that the car is still in one peice. Anyway, the Clearcote started to oxidize and it lost nearly all of its luster.

Not anymore.

In an effort to bring the paint back from the dead, I employed all my detailing know-how and my right arm.

Lets start off with a couple of before pics.

Here is the car as it sat this morning. Groundeffects scraped up pretty bad, and absolutuly no shine.


Here is the only black peice on the vehicle, it is a good place to show to the changes being made in the paint.


Here is a shot of the sail panel area. Can you see me in the picture? I sure can't.


Lastly, here is a shot of the car facing the sun. Notice the shineyness.



Part 2:

After a wash, clay bar and using Meguiars Swirl Remover 2.0, some shine started to pull through.

Part 3:

Finally, with some ClearKote Vanilla Mouse and Concours P21S, the paint made a breakthrough!














With all of that, I realise, I wish I had an orbital buffer. The paint would look 1000X better than what it does now.

damn, looks MUCH better.

WOW! nice change!

Nice job

lol damn thats awesome

WOW!! Sure did make it look alot better than before... Great job by the way. I bet it took forever to do that. Somtimes i hat waxing my car.

you could have saved some time and got better results using a buffer.

wow thats great good job man

Looks good, you guys talking about buffers, how much does a decent buffer cost. And whats a good brand. Its a pain to wax a car by hand

hahaha holy crap
that worked good!

Nice job!!

I bet your right arm is sore though!

I've got a Craftsman 10" buffer and it works pretty well. I don't have much experience with buffers, but I've had this one for about a year and it still works.

The link that Sonar_un gave is to a forum I spend a lot of time at, and specifically to the dual action polisher I use.

There's a big difference between a rotary and a dual action buffer. Basically both can fix a lot of paint defects, the rotary being able to correct faster and to correct worse defects than the dual action. The downside? If you don't know what you're doing with a rotary you can leave more swirls behind than you take out, or worse, you can burn through your paint before you know what's happening. Downside to the dual action is that if you don't know what you're doing you'll just spend a bunch of time moving polish around and accomplish nothing.

Having said all that I'll bet Sonar_un could bring that shine out even more with Meguiar's #80 speed glaze with that PC7424, then for long lasting protection use a polymer sealant like NXT, and then top with P21S.

Still dude, you did a great job on that car. Red can be a real pain to bring back the shine once it's lost, so I tip my hat to you. Fine job on a nice car.

"Finally, with some ClearKote Vanilla Mouse and Concours P21S"

never heard of either of those....where'd you get them at? i should try them b/c i've used swirl remover and the oxidation doesn't go away on the hood...

Those aren't products you'd use to remove swirls. The P21S is a pure carnauba wax and is used as a final gloss enhancer/protectant. The VM may hide some light swirls, but it still isn't a permanent fix for them.

To get rid of swirls you either need to attack the car by hand with a good polish (and strong arms with a lot of stamina!) or get a good dual action polisher and something like Meguiar's #80 from their professional line, or Meguiar's Deep Crystal System Polish which should be available at auto parts stores, KMart, etc.

Yeah, the biggest difference in the removal of oxidation was the Meguiars #9 Swirl Remover 2.0. It does an ok job on paints that are pretty good, but need a touch up, but for what I did, required alot more work.

I have seen the #9 work miracles on some of my vehicles, and some of my friends vehicles. But in actuality, it is just a light abrasive polish, you can deffinitely get some better results working with a heavier polish and then finishing it up with some of the lighter stuff.

i can get swirls out easily. i have an electric buffer and lots of different swirl removers/compounds....i just need something that works good with macho oxidation....the hood looks bad around the edges and around the blisters...

Wow, thats quite a change. I didn't know you still had that car around.

Nice work though and very nice post. I like that you took the pics from the same angle after each step.

How did you get your headlight pockets so black and shiny. Mine are dull and i tried to put wax on them once and like the wax applicator turned pitch black. I didnt want to take the paint off so i stoped.

How do yours look so good?

It was painted with gloss black paint, not flat black. Thats probabally the difference.

pretty sure if you keep waxing they will come out better...all your doing is waxing off all the old dull paint and it should turn out pretty shiny underneath. Theres no harm in doing so.

Yea i know you take off the oxidized paint, its just i dont know how much paint there is in there and i didnt want to take it all off.

Well the Heritage and Z28 Camaro's came with semi-gloss (satin) black headlight buckets, so don't expect too much shine from yours A Mack.