My 86 iroc on the right you've seen before ...the car I use for personal training and product tests. I got extremely lucky and found a roller for sale $500 in a similar color with solid panels to replace my bondo caked and rusty ones. Swapped the hatch, doors, fenders, and front bumper.



Friend and now owner of the roller for $300 to be rebuilt helped do all the swap work.



Took the opportunity to spray undercoat on the inner chassis



My new front clip off the donor. Panel gaps aren't perfect but my car will have a date with a frame machine



Ready for detail



Arch liners are trashed, will likely just paint these.



As you can see the donor car was painted with all the trim on. Removed spoiler to clean gunk. End caps stayed on as I cleaned those areas last week when I mounted the end caps and swapped the hatch.



Tires due for a good strip



Looks like a kid scribbled in my new headlight bucket before I got the roller. This would not correct. I may go to the iroc style black headlight buckets because of this.

 

Forgot I had this 1z wheel cleaner in my detail cabinet for over a year. Still works. Wheels need refinishing ..didn't waste too much time. Tires stripped with simple green and then tarminator...tip I got from detailers domain.



Cg citrus mix with cg maxi suds. Two bucket wash and decon with nanoskin 3in autoscrub pad by hand. Panels I swapped were fairly smooth...car sat for years in someone's yard before I found it.



My big wheel woolie was perfect for this.



Paint condition:

Heavy oxidation and orange peel in some places on the swapped panels. Elected not to wet sand as I knew I would already be working til midnight.




Fender scuffers: Hood and hatch had to be strapped down when we towed the roller home. I was able to correct these about 90% with some patience. They should be gone if I go back and wetsand some of the orange peel away.



Cloudy door



Cloudy door, and you can see the difference in shade of blue



Hatch was the worst of all panels.



Sad louvers

 

M100. BS mf cutting pad. Rupes 21. Elbow grease. More elbow grease. Small hatch panel took over twice as long to polish as any other panel. Tried other pad polish combos which didn't make a difference. Didn't feel like digging out my rotary..im really not comfortable with it like I am with my other machines.







This is how the paint looked after just correction with m100... before any refinement. There was no compounding haze...just orange peel from the paint. I wasn't expecting this to happen...but since I'm not a paying customer I surpassed further polishing. Inspection the following day in bright sun showed I was a-ok.



AF satin tyre gel







I used sonax trim restore gel. It seemed to work but the louvers are badly sun damaged so I may just have them painted.

 

cellphone outdoor pics



Was chilly Monday morning. In love with my first car more than ever. Since 2007 it hasn't looked close to this decent.

bonus...excuse crappy quality. To celebrate...I took my car back to the same parking lot where I found it for sale a few days before I bought it on June 27, 2007. top pic is from 07, bottom pic is from this week.







and one during the show

 

Great work. I swear I've seen the car on /r/autodetailing before.

 

Patience & vision prevail!!

{ careful where you go puting your woolie!! } ; )

 

yes you have...thanks!

 

beautiful car! I have an enormous soft spot for 86s,and yours is killer.looks new!

 

Great Job! My friend made a huge order from CG (chemical guys) and he is obsessed with their products, especially, the blacklight glaze. I used a product called Sleek from Car Brite with a light foam pad and always get great results.

Great write up.