2002 Steel Grey 6spd coupe Daily/Restoration project

[Tbonem3]

lol thanks Mike. As much patience as I could muster; not easy.

Want to post some more progress of the interior. I haven't changed too much yet, just more and more cleaning.

While installing audio cables, I cleaned the driver footwell/pedal area and trims





Bought a new cubby for my other car, so now I have a good condition hand-me-down to replace the badly scratched original cubby lid



Original steering wheel looks so good now, I have no plans to replace it



Armrest looks good, but is actually cracked at the back, so it doesn't lift up properly, and comes apart when opened. I have a spare to replace it with soon.



Seats are in fair condition. I cleaned them well enough, but am not going to take it any further as I'm actually going to be installing a whole interior from a lower mileage car in the not too distant future (still black).




After cleaning the mats, I actually received a better condition front pair from a friend, oh well! I'll replace those and then the interior will be done until I swap out the seats and door cards.



Then I just have to remove the rear tints, and the interior will be done. I may decide to refinish the door handles once I'm swapping door cards.

[Maxima SE]

Man you have a lot of patience to do all that by hand but it came out looking like a new car. I would have probably went at it with hook and loop 2000 grit followed by 3000 and then compound and probably ruined my paint with circular sand marks all over lol

[Tbonem3]

More wet sanding. Front bumper is also a poorly finished respray.

Examples of orange peel:





IIRC, I used 2k grit, but not much pressure.




3" Meg's MF pad on forced rotation using Griot's fast correcting cream



All done






Outside:




Only the passenger pillar left to wet sand and then the exterior is done!

[Tbonem3]

Hot off my wetsanding adventure, I thought I might improve the driver door a little more. If you'll recall, the PDR guy worked on it, but couldn't make it perfect because someone else had already attempted to fix it, poorly though. Damage is in the middle of the pic, you can just see it. Easier to see IRL.



First, I went very lightly over the area so that it would expose the high and low spots of the dent and I could better see what I'm dealing with:



You can see that the shape of the damage is very vertical and narrow. So, I rolled up the sandpaper to match the shape



Took it easy - I didn't want to remove so much orange peel and flatten it so much that it becomes an eyesore in a different way. I figured I wouldn't be able to completely hide the dent, but thought I could smooth it out.



Dry. Time to buff it and see if I made enough, but not too much of a difference



Again, hard to see in a picture vs. real life, but if is definitely smoother and less egregious. Orange peel doesn't look as "disturbed," but also not too flattened either, which can happen if you remove too much clear with sanding.



Further back, more realistic view - can't even see anything at this distance.



_______

Decided to go from 12mm spacers up front to 15mm. Not a huge difference, but these stock wheels need all the help they can get. I don't like using spacer, but I also don't like the stock wheel look, so 15mm is my compromise - won't go to 18mm or 20. Pictured is the old 12mm (KSP - really nice), 15mm is behind it. I tried to put the 12mm in back, but with the fat 255/40 tire on 9" rim, it rubs, so went back to 10mm which is fine - only really wanted more "poke" up front.



Pretty decent poke



Car is looking good now!

[Tbonem3]

Nice man! I’m in San Diego with an 02 stee grey aswell. I’ve been doing a full engine rebuild as well as replacing all the rotting rubber and plastic, and headlight lemses and such. Body work plans to be my next thing. I’m actually buying an OEM csl trunk tomorrow, and plan to have it painted along with a full paint correction in the future

Thanks, great color!

Amazing work! It looks gorgeous

Thank you Ejaz

[0-60motorsports]

Amazing work! It looks gorgeous

[Chanman1029]

Nice man! I’m in San Diego with an 02 stee grey aswell. I’ve been doing a full engine rebuild as well as replacing all the rotting rubber and plastic, and headlight lemses and such. Body work plans to be my next thing. I’m actually buying an OEM csl trunk tomorrow, and plan to have it painted along with a full paint correction in the future

[Tbonem3]

...the rest of the buffing rear bumper/QP

Like I mentioned, the plastic bumper really needs an aggressive machine or at least pads/product to cut through with any decent speed. So I stayed with the 3" MF pad for the top of the bumper, but also the back of the QP. A 5.5" pad wouldn't be precise enough here. You can do small spots with your finger/hand, but that's also time/energy consuming.




Even with the small 3", this little strip, below, was tricky. You have to have a sure grip and control so that you don't come off and damage other surfaces. It's also a small area, so easier to burn through since you're concentrating your efforts in such a small area which leads to more heat (cut).



The tail lights, though recently polished, still had some defects I thought I could improve on, so I hit them with compound as well. They look great for being original (2006 325ci).



Kept using that 5.5" Meguiar's MF cutting disk on the larger area of the bumper. The bumper vibrates a lot which prevents you from heating it up well - the MF pad makes up for that. You do have to be a little careful with the MF pad as it's easier to burn through on high spots. The MF pad, alone, was perfect for most of the bumper (flattest surfaces), but I did have to do a final pass with foam - I'll speak about that again later (see the tow hook cover).



Almost there!




I'm really pleased with the level of orange peel and overall job I've done, if I may say so. This was a spur of the moment decision (to wetsand), and I'm glad it didn't end with a sad story.



Staying on the topic of orange peel, it's not as important that the level of orange peel match factory on a place like the rear bumper, not just because a plastic bumper will never match the body exactly anyway, but because there's no factory panel immediately next to it to compare to.

However, the area I was concerned about, was the little bit of QP that wraps around, under the tail light as it butts up to the factory trunk lid, so you've got two surfaces right next to each other. This is a similar issue when it comes to color match of paint.

Here's a little video I made, once finished, with the trunk closed, to compare the two surfaces; factory trunk and resprayed QP:

Alright, driver side done, now looking at the pass side of the bumper. I put some tape over some pre-existing scuffs. The scuffs were deep enough that the clear was basically gone and I didn't want to remove much more paint (with compound and MF pad).



I took the tape off for the final pass with the foam pad. You can barely see any defect! Worked out perfectly.



A close up. Even this close up, it looks good. I'll run a damp q-tip through the gap between the bumper and diffuser to clean up left over compound residue.



Last last bit before calling it "done."



Ok, for real, "Done!"



Yes, the bumper is a bit wonky. I'm waiting on a muffler (og scorza) before I drop the stock muffler in order to re-fit the bumper.

Did a wash since the rest of the car was dusty/dirty



Wow wow wow, I couldn't be happier!





The rear end looked too good, I had to cut down and shine up the factory driver QP even better to match it all lol



Ok, paintwork is almost all done. Next, I'm going to wetsand the front bumper (also an unfinished respray), and the upper pillar of the passenger QP. After that, I'll cut the rear of the trunk and then do a final polish and seal of the entire car by the end of the year or so. My plan is to try the new(ish) Mother's CMX SiO2/TiO2 polish/sealant, topped with beadmaker after 24 hr cure. Then I'll be done with paint work for a while #sad.

[Tbonem3]

Thanks! It's like anything right, once you try it a bit, you figure it out. Just start light like 2500, 3k and go easy

[robgill]

Awesome results!! Give's me a lot more confidence to give wet sanding a go one day 😆.

[Tbonem3]

Man you really saved that paint! Looking great.

Thanks!

Buffing (removing sanding marks, restoring clarity)

Now that the sanding is all done, and I'm going to start buffing with compound (in order to remove deepest sanding marks), I taped off certain surfaces.



Before using the D/A machine, I actually used rubbing compound by finger (wrapped with MF towel) in some difficult-to-reach areas, specifically right behind the black pillar gutter/trim. You can see the reflection of the tape. It's difficult to generate enough heat without a forced rotation rotary in funny spots like this, but you can generate plenty of friction by hand, in a small place.



Now for buffing. I went back to the medium correcting cream since this end of the QP didn't need so much sanding. Using a medium cutting orange CSS pad.



Ostensibly, it looks great



But let's look closer, under the fluorescent...



Nope, not enough. You can still see some sanding marks



Back to the fast correcting compound. I also recently, randomly bought, on clearance, the new Chemical guys hex pad (slightly different than the normal hex pad). I'm not a CG's fan tbh, but I actually like these new hex pads better than my go to Lake Country CSS.



All clear! I had to go over the hoff kink area by hand a few times (was lazy and didn't want to get the 3" out which still would have required some manual rubbing anyway (albeit less).



I'm really pleased with how this area came out. It was tricky and it was the messiest portion of respray, not just the orange peel, but the extra defects (runs, bubbles, dirt, idk what it all was)



Caught the paint (cut, not yet polished even) in natural sunlight. Pretty.



I was able to reach all other spots with the 5.5" pad, but I ended up having to bust out the 3", not so much for its size, but more so for the forced rotation. Really cuts down on the buffing time, but you have to be more careful, ofc. I really should get a proper rotary at this point, but oh well. Now, I should only be doing light polishes on both cars. No more heavy cutting unless I decide to take on clients.



All done with the QP!



Now, it's time for the bumper. Bumpers are plastic, so less rigid, and they're not as rigidly attached as a body panel, so it's much harder to get heat into the panel, thus less cut. I stayed with the fast correcting compound, but moved to the heavy cutting meguiar's MF disc



Beautiful!



More to come. The rest of the bumper, and the little strip that runs under the taillights.

[akshon]

Man you really saved that paint! Looking great.

[Tbonem3]

Wet sanding rear bumper and rear portion of QP

Another shot of the back of QP where it meets the trunk. You can quite easily see the disparity in finishes between factory trunk and resprayed QP




The little strip under the trunk as well



The respray went all the way to the other side, and they stopped it at the indentation (good spot to do so)



Started in on the bumper





Is that a prius?





Now moving to the back. It looks like the body shop just kept the diffuser on and sprayed it with the bumper. It's hard to work on the bumper, exp near the bottom as it flexes due to being plastic, plus it's just not as secure as higher up or a metal panel.





The left corner of the bumper already had a scuff on it, so I was careful to sand around that, and let the buffing stage make it look as good as possible.



Here's another example of how textured the bumper was. Much more noticeable on this side being next to the factory original driver's QP.




All done! Finally. At this point, I was like 2 weeks into this so I was pretty happy to be done. Buffing/polishing is familiar territory, so the hard part is over!



You can check your work by viewing the paint at a sharp angle for more reflectivity. Very pleased with this. Buffing next...

[Tbonem3]

Quarter panel continued

I'm very very pleased overall with the paint job itself, but there were a few defects that I'm happy will be gone after the wetsanding I was doing anyway. Immediately behind the hoff kink and some under the top ridge. Not sure if they're solvent pops or air bubbles or contaminants or what.




Started up the sanding again, right behind the hoff kink






The rough texture doesn't go up too high on the pillar and above the windows, so I just decided to stop before getting too high up. It's almost a good match to factory in the upper pillar, so I'll get around to it later - not a priority.




Most of the end of the QP was not too textured and I was able to take it easier and finish most of it pretty quickly. It does get bad again, however, right around the gas lid and tail light.







Alright, all done with the QP except for the little area the runs below the tail lights. I'll show you next how textured that is. The bumper is basically just as bad, so I'll be doing it now too.




Started in on the section below lights. In the section at the very end of the QP, before that break/line, you can see that I've left still a bit of texture. You don't want to sand completely flat (unless your painting ) It should still be smooth to the touch, mind.

Next post will be finishing the little strip under the taillight/trunk and the bumper.

[Tbonem3]

Continued

Left off last with the door mostly finished, to gauge progress. Now finishing the bottom of the door and more of the QP





Did the areas around the molding by hand



All done (Up to the fender bulge)



Here's the sealant/polish I spoke about





Time to go back to the wetsanding and finish the QP. Before I did, I washed the car since it had gotten dirty enough in the areas I wasn't working on



The beads!




Back in the garage, now I'm working on the end of the QP. The very top, above the tail light, wasn't finished at all. Very rough.






Done!



Next will be rest of QP by the gas lid and behind hofmeister kink. And I'm doing the rear bumper as it was also unfinished.