Paint restoration question

[67Benz]

Hey guys, I want to restore the paint on my car. It is the original white color with cracks that looks like death walley. I tried to use clay then heavy duty polish compand but the cracks are still there. I attached a picture how the paint looks like. The whole car is the same.

Any advise is much appreciated. And no I dont have money for a new paint job

[IVIuzzy]

it looks like a leather seat! hahah


did u try 3m compund the heavy duty stuff?

something that bad id start wetsanding, id start with 1000 grit paper, if that doesnt work move down to 800. do not go below 800

after wetsanding compound and polish and it should look a little better

try not to rub through the paint though it should be pretty hard because the mb paint, assuming it is original is very hard, keep me posted!

[daw_two]

I have NEVER performed a "wet sanding" but have seen\read a lot of post about it.

So. My suggestion is: wet sand it
If that does not work: repaint --- but maybe you could do the prep work.


Good Luck.

[pj67coll]

Are you sure that is the original paint?

- Peter.

[IVIuzzy]

the best try is to wetsand it as i said, if u start going through the paint, at least u smoothed it for new paint, that looks pretty rough. my factory paint was on the roof of my car and i was able to sand it down with 800 and bring it up to 2000, buf and polished, looks brand new.

make sure u use 3m buffing compounds
heavy duty compound,
swirl mark remover
ultrafina se.

[POS]

Don't wetsand until you know (a) how deep that paint is, and (b) was it ever repainted before. I have wetsanded, and it takes paint down quick. Your paint looks like a respray at some point - I've owned piles of original MB paint cars and none of them have ever looked like that. If you wetsand that, you may find yourself down to metal within two minutes, and then your paint will really look bad. If heavy duty compound didn't have any affect, then I'd suggest you do nothing and deal with it.

[IVIuzzy]

some heavy duty compound has more grit than 1000 grit paper...

[thorsen]

I don't see where anything short of a repaint is going to look better than what you have right now.

[IVIuzzy]

i was going to say the same thing, its already messed up....try what you can, whats the worst that can happen?

[67Benz]

Hey guys thanks for all the advises you were right on the money. I also went to the local custom paint shop and asked about it. They also suggested 3M rubbing compound and a buffer they use. It does make it look way better. It took off the top dirty gray layer and now you can see the real color and much shinier. The little spider webbing are so deep that wont go away but hard to see now. All together I am happy with the result. Took me 6 hours to do half a car yesterday and waxing not even included. But the car looks so much better already. After this I plan to do all chrome parts and then she should feel like its 1967 again..

To answer your question I thought this was the original paint since some areas are so thin that I can see the metal. But again the car could have been sanded off and repainted.

Attached some pictures of the result without wax.

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[IVIuzzy]

nice job, make sure after rubbing compound u use a swirl remover and a foam pad...i think 3ms pad for swirl remover is black in color. it will bring the color back, if u want to go crazy, then use the blue pad with 3m ultrafina se. but i think the ultrafina is like 45 a quart.

[Colorado220]

Makes me want to do this to my car. Well at least the parts that are the same color. I need to work on the fenders and paint matching.

[Tomguy]

FYI, not trying to sell a brand or anything, but on the Chargerforums I see "Junkman" from Adam's Polishes has really good videos. Basically a ground-up tutorial on paint restoration. If following this technique wouldn't work then you probably need a repaint. This is safer than wet sanding and has better results for 99% of us DIYers!

http://www.chargerforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106247

[POS]

Very nice! Congrats!