My 50 Hours Restoration On A Bnr32

[cobrAA]

Hey guys, this post was done 3 years ago, but i never though about posting it here. I'm sure some people will enjoy it!! From rad bracket, to wet-sanding, to twin turbo pipe, to volk wheel polishing to Zymol vintage wax applied, to windows polishing, everything was done on this car !

I do have more Skylines and R35 posted on my facebook page if you wish to follow:

https://www.facebook.com/Waxxonspa

Here's the thread in question :
http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/show-n-shine/27533-black-1990-skyline-gtr-get-showcar-detailing.html

[JGTC]

Awesome display of patience and craftsmanship mate, always great to see a skyline getting pampered

[SiR_RB]

Awesome work ! Paint looks better then new

[colourclassic]

Superb, but I'd cry at the first sign of rain clouds.

[junkie]

For me, and a lot of pro detailers, rain is no reason to run and hide but a good chance to test the protection of the wax or sealant. Especially when its a new product

[Ants]

Have not clicked on link yet.

Am about to and already getting excited about this

[cobrAA]

So were you excited or I let you down ? Feel free to look at the Bugatti Veyron black chrome I detailed not long ago! ( it's on my facebook page) hihi!

[Ants]

So were you excited or I let you down ? Feel free to look at the Bugatti Veyron black chrome I detailed not long ago! ( it's on my facebook page) hihi!

Excited. The only I thing I was disappointed by was when I reached the end.

Always want more pictures.

I did not know we could use clay bar for windows so I will be doing my windows as well now.

Still learning but getting there.

Good work.

Keep it up.

[enka]

wow.

[France]

Wow awesome effort

[cobrAA]

thanks guy ! I actually have more parts since this last detail. Seems like some people would like to see lol

[Tonks]

Yeah, post up more pics!

[Swole]

Probably just me, but a few pics didn't load for me.

Otherwise the attention to detail you put in is stunning.

[cobrAA]

thanks guys, if pic don't load tho, it could be autogeek's fault.

[cobrAA]

http://montrealracing.com/forums/showthread.php?715043-Skyline-GTR-condition-showroom-!-99-correction&p=8213246&viewfull=1#post8213246

Excuse my french!

http://montrealracing.com/forums/showthread.php?715043-Skyline-GTR-condition-showroom-!-99-correction&p=8297233&viewfull=1#post8297233

photoshoot with a friend of mine GTR
http://montrealracing.com/forums/showthread.php?813178-2013-Nissan-GTR-Waterfront-Shoot

[cobrAA]

hey guys.... big upgrade.. here's part 1 !!

Okay i'm about to drop the *bomb*... till then first part here!!

Une version française va possiblement venir au fur et à mesure, mais au moment d'écrire ce thread, j'ai décidé de le faire en une langue seulement car je crois que j'en ai BEAUCOUP à dire et la traduction couperait le beat solide de la progression de mon thread !

So... what happened since 2010 when this thread/car won best of show thread from Autogeek's staff ? Well.. I simply maintained the car while the car attended some car show. The car had little respray due to new addition like greddy rear spat and M3 mirror style. I had to match the orange peel with the rest of the car but nothing major.

In 2011-12, Chemical guys gave us a free pot of Chemical Guys Celeste dettaglio V2 to thanks us for letting them use some of our pictures for their new ads. Cool! Another ''award'' from this detail

And there comes 2013... CATASTROPHE!! The car had his fender rolled.. However 2 fender out of 4 cracked.. leaving paint cracked and not looking too pretty.. the rear spat fitting done by the bodyshot wasnt too pretty... Long story short, about 40% of the car got resprayed! So, I didn't get to detail the car before the respray was done. Make sens right ?

Then.. the day the respray happened, the color-match was HORRIBLE!!! I mean seriously horrible... So, the painter agreed to re-do the job and apologize. However it took 3 weeks due to vacation and busy week. fast forward 3 weeks later.. I finally got to see the car repainted correctly, but with nasty orange peel :

If you don't know what orange peel are, they are pretty common when you get bodyshop work done on your car, you will get these kind of reflection from the paint. Sometimes it's worse than other and depending on the color of the car it show less or more. So think about an orange and how wavy the peel is.. and now look at these pictures:

Look closely at the reflection of the wall and the sky on the trunk.. can't you see the reflection is wavy and not clear ?

And now... does one side appears to be MUCH MORE clear than the other ?

And now here's a close up...

orange peel :

No orange peel ( or very minimal) crystal clear reflection :

To achieve this kind of finish, we need to go through an exhaustive process that takes hours to achieve. We first need to wet-sand the paint using a ''coarse'' grit ( coarse for finishing paint but not coarse if you were to perform bodyshop job like grinding paint!) to actually level the paint by knocking off the peel effect on the paint. Imagine the paint as a mountain.. every high spot is actually what we call the peel/wavy effect. What I need to do is sand those mountain/high spot to level the paint so that I obtain a paint that doesn't have any high-spot. Like this:

After that you will realize that some contamination might have stuck INTO the paint.. that's what we call ''grain''. It's actually small dust particle that get trap on the paint during the paint curing inside the paint booth. So far from what I saw.. no matter how hard the bodyshop try to avoid them, they're will always be a few trap on the paint. To correct this, you need to use another speciality tools with coarser grit paper that will knock these grits individually: ( this process can be very long!)

Once everything is done.. meaning the orange peel is removed and we achieved an uniform ''matte'' looking paint, it's time to refinish the paint using a finer coarse paper. Usually these paper will have a foam backing so they will contours the mountain instead of ''knocking them'' and leveling them. The problem with the first and second step is that the paint is very hazy/matte looking. In order to bring back the shine, you need to refinish the paint ; this means that the finer grit will be able to remove the coarser grit I just put on the paint. ( ie: If you have #1000 grit, you need a #2000 grit to remove the #1000 grit and then, you could use a #3000 or #5000 grit to remove the #2000 grit you created before). So this is how the paint looked after a #3000 grit pass:

Remember how it looked once fully polished ?

Oh gosssshh!! isn't that pretty ? Some ferrari and uber-expensive car don't even have that kind of clarity in their paint!

As you can see, the problem with wet-sanding is not to level the paint or remove the orange peel, the real challenge ( and this is what set a part the real detailer to the ''other'') is to finish the paint to a PERFECT finish without leaving any compounding haze, small dust particle, pigtail, sanding mark etc.

So after I was done with the trunk, I started working the rear fender:

And I was done for the day......................................

Well not exactly..........

1 hour later after leaving the bodyshop. this happened:

f**k !!!!!!

So basicly, we had to respray the car twice to get it done, I already worked 5-6 hours into the paint and then comes this accident... The damage ?

- corner light

- headlight

- rebar

- leaking intercooler

- destroyed bumper

- bended frame

Someone offered to repair the fiberglass bumper, he said he would do the rought part and then a bodyshop would just have to sand it and put some body filler and prep it:

Well.. after doing 3 different bodyshop, not one wanted to work with this bumper, they all said the repair was too rought and not worth going over. they would have to start over.. Oh great! More time and money wasted.

Then someone offered to trade a headlight to help the owner repair his car. Next thing we knew is that Nissan decided to make 2 different type of headlight in the little 5 yr timespan the R32 existed. As you can see here, notice the DRL not the same and one take H3C while the other take H1:

So while the headlight were out, I was asked to paint the inside of the light black instead of chrome to achieve a meaner look:

Looking prettier isn't ?

It took me about 5 hours to do.. remove the cover, polish inside the cover with a glass polish, polish the outside with a glass polish and glass polishing pad, sand the chrome and give multiple coat of paint, then I had to re-seal the cover with urethane we use at my shop for windshield. You think we were done hen!??!

Well no... i left the headlight on my drying machine and went to grab my camera to take some pictures, when I was in my room I heard a big '' smash''.... yes... one headlight fall off the drying machine and the cover being glass.. broke again!!! Believe it or not.. I had to supply another glass cover because it was totally my fault.. Basicly, I didn't make a penny doing this mod..

Rebar was bought at a JDM shop, Intercooler were upgraded to a bigger Greddy unit, corner light were replaced for a pair of smoked clear corner by jdmgarage.

Now into the bend frame... we went to a bodyshop i don't wish to name on the south shore of montreal ( but maybe I should...) and they took the car 2 months to fix the frame... Here's how the car came back to the bodyshop:

Hood hinge could barely close, headlight was still 1 inch pushed inside the hood. nothing aligned right, huge gap between the headlight and corner light.. What we latter found out is that they simply shimmed the fender and other parts of the body to make it ''close'' but that it!! What a f**kin shame... and they call them professional bodyshop...

oh and they also did this beautiful glue job free of charge........

In the mean time, the rear bumper got damaged from someone.. maybe at the bodyshop!

So imagine how the owner felt ; He used to have a uber-clean skyline and out of a sudden, he get 2 respray because the first one isnt done right. Then, he try to fix the bumper but have to be redone, get his headlight done and then by accident i smash one, then he get his frame fixed and learn that he have to get it redone... what a shitty year!!

Beside maybe this funny moment lol.. We shared a pic bumper-less with a Veyron

So the car went into storage like that....

Part 1 done... stay tuned for part 2 ( which is what was done for 2014!)

[cobrAA]

So... what happened since 2010 when this thread/car won best of show thread from Autogeek's staff ? Well.. I simply maintained the car while the car attended some car show. The car had little respray due to new addition like greddy rear spat and M3 mirror style. I had to match the orange peel with the rest of the car but nothing major.

In 2011-12, Chemical guys gave us a free pot of Chemical Guys Celeste dettaglio V2 to thanks us for letting them use some of our pictures for their new ads. Cool! Another ''award'' from this detail

And there comes 2013... CATASTROPHE!! The car had his fender rolled.. However 2 fender out of 4 cracked.. leaving paint cracked and not looking too pretty.. the rear spat fitting done by the bodyshot wasnt too pretty... Long story short, about 40% of the car got resprayed! So, I didn't get to detail the car before the respray was done. Make sens right ?

Then.. the day the respray happened, the color-match was HORRIBLE!!! I mean seriously horrible... So, the painter agreed to re-do the job and apologize. However it took 3 weeks due to vacation and busy week. fast forward 3 weeks later.. I finally got to see the car repainted correctly, but with nasty orange peel :

If you don't know what orange peel are, they are pretty common when you get bodyshop work done on your car, you will get these kind of reflection from the paint. Sometimes it's worse than other and depending on the color of the car it show less or more. So think about an orange and how wavy the peel is.. and now look at these pictures:

Look closely at the reflection of the wall and the sky on the trunk.. can't you see the reflection is wavy and not clear ?

And now... does one side appears to be MUCH MORE clear than the other ?

And now here's a close up...

orange peel :



No orange peel ( or very minimal) crystal clear reflection :


To achieve this kind of finish, we need to go through an exhaustive process that takes hours to achieve. We first need to wet-sand the paint using a ''coarse'' grit ( coarse for finishing paint but not coarse if you were to perform bodyshop job like grinding paint!) to actually level the paint by knocking off the peel effect on the paint. Imagine the paint as a mountain.. every high spot is actually what we call the peel/wavy effect. What I need to do is sand those mountain/high spot to level the paint so that I obtain a paint that doesn't have any high-spot. Like this:



After that you will realize that some contamination might have stuck INTO the paint.. that's what we call ''grain''. It's actually small dust particle that get trap on the paint during the paint curing inside the paint booth. So far from what I saw.. no matter how hard the bodyshop try to avoid them, they're will always be a few trap on the paint. To correct this, you need to use another speciality tools with coarser grit paper that will knock these grits individually: ( this process can be very long!)

Once everything is done.. meaning the orange peel is removed and we achieved an uniform ''matte'' looking paint, it's time to refinish the paint using a finer coarse paper. Usually these paper will have a foam backing so they will contours the mountain instead of ''knocking them'' and leveling them. The problem with the first and second step is that the paint is very hazy/matte looking. In order to bring back the shine, you need to refinish the paint ; this means that the finer grit will be able to remove the coarser grit I just put on the paint. ( ie: If you have #1000 grit, you need a #2000 grit to remove the #1000 grit and then, you could use a #3000 or #5000 grit to remove the #2000 grit you created before). So this is how the paint looked after a #3000 grit pass:

Remember how it looked once fully polished ?


Oh gosssshh!! isn't that pretty ? Some ferrari and uber-expensive car don't even have that kind of clarity in their paint!

As you can see, the problem with wet-sanding is not to level the paint or remove the orange peel, the real challenge ( and this is what set a part the real detailer to the ''other'') is to finish the paint to a PERFECT finish without leaving any compounding haze, small dust particle, pigtail, sanding mark etc.

So after I was done with the trunk, I started working the rear fender:

[cobrAA]

And I was done for the day......................................

Well not exactly..........

1 hour later after leaving the bodyshop. this happened:

f**k !!!!!!

So basicly, we had to respray the car twice to get it done, I already worked 5-6 hours into the paint and then comes this accident... The damage ?

- corner light
- headlight
- rebar
- leaking intercooler
- destroyed bumper
- bended frame


Someone offered to repair the fiberglass bumper, he said he would do the rought part and then a bodyshop would just have to sand it and put some body filler and prep it:

Well.. after doing 3 different bodyshop, not one wanted to work with this bumper, they all said the repair was too rought and not worth going over. they would have to start over.. Oh great! More time and money wasted.

Then someone offered to trade a headlight to help the owner repair his car. Next thing we knew is that Nissan decided to make 2 different type of headlight in the little 5 yr timespan the R32 existed. As you can see here, notice the DRL not the same and one take H3C while the other take H1:



So while the headlight were out, I was asked to paint the inside of the light black instead of chrome to achieve a meaner look:

Looking prettier isn't ?

It took me about 5 hours to do.. remove the cover, polish inside the cover with a glass polish, polish the outside with a glass polish and glass polishing pad, sand the chrome and give multiple coat of paint, then I had to re-seal the cover with urethane we use at my shop for windshield. You think we were done hen!??!

Well no... i left the headlight on my drying machine and went to grab my camera to take some pictures, when I was in my room I heard a big '' smash''.... yes... one headlight fall off the drying machine and the cover being glass.. broke again!!! Believe it or not.. I had to supply another glass cover because it was totally my fault.. Basicly, I didn't make a penny doing this mod..

Rebar was bought at a JDM shop, Intercooler were upgraded to a bigger Greddy unit, corner light were replaced for a pair of smoked clear corner by jdmgarage.

Now into the bend frame... we went to a bodyshop i don't wish to name on the south shore of montreal ( but maybe I should...) and they took the car 2 months to fix the frame... Here's how the car came back to the bodyshop:

Hood hinge could barely close, headlight was still 1 inch pushed inside the hood. nothing aligned right, huge gap between the headlight and corner light.. What we latter found out is that they simply shimmed the fender and other parts of the body to make it ''close'' but that it!! What a f**kin shame... and they call them professional bodyshop...

oh and they also did this beautiful glue job free of charge........


In the mean time, the rear bumper got damaged from someone.. maybe at the bodyshop!


So imagine how the owner felt ; He used to have a uber-clean skyline and out of a sudden, he get 2 respray because the first one isnt done right. Then, he try to fix the bumper but have to be redone, get his headlight done and then by accident i smash one, then he get his frame fixed and learn that he have to get it redone... what a shitty year!!
Beside maybe this funny moment lol.. We shared a pic bumper-less with a Veyron



So the car went into storage like that....

Part 1 done... stay tuned for part 2 ( which is what was done for 2014!)

[TommyR33]

WOW! Amazing restoration.. and a spot of bad luck. My paint needs some serious attention my R33, faded parts here and there.. not im worried about taking it to a shop to get sprayed properly!
Keen to see part 2.

[cobrAA]

part 2 is here!!

Part 2 :

Shoot out to The painter, Alex, at Promec in Laval ((450) 629-7077), for taking care of the car like it was meant to be! He sent me some picture of the progress so let's take a look at them.

The skyline GTR R32 is an iconic car and the owner wished to keep it OEM looking with small addition for a meaner look ( i.e: carbon fiber addon). For this reason, Alex had the job to restore the car as new as possible.

Trims: restoring trims is a real PITA because the car is now seen as a collection car and parts in Japan are now selling twice as much.. To change all the trims and seal on the car, it would've of cost min. 1500$ + 2 quarter windows ( which can usually go for 300-500$ each). So, Alex did a miracle by cleaning the trim, lightly sand them and paint them with a special trim black paint. I was very pleasant with what he did. Basically he saved the owner a 1500-2000$ expense. They look VERY GOOD.


1) Remember part 1 where I said the bodyshop did a shimming job instead of a actual frame job ? well.. the gab between the headlight and corner like was like that ''V'' . The guy at promec knew a retired guy (about 70yr old) who have all the frame tools in his garage.. they brought the car there and they finally managed to do the job it deserved!


2) The car had some small dent and such..Alex was able to remove all these dent simply by sanding down the paint to the metal because the car had so much paint on the car anyways.

Because of the new carbon fiber N1 lip on the hood, Alex had to fill the hole used by the oem lip:


While removing all lower body parts, Alex found out some part of the car had body filler and/or small rust ( normal for a 26 yr old car!)

Sanding down all the paint :

Then, each individual add-on part got painted:



The taillight received a smoked coat ( the owner didn't want to go too crazy because like I said before, preserving the OEM iconic of the Skyline was essential), but it still added a nice little gloss to the taillight. Corner light and backup light also have been smoked.

I personally recommended we had the intercooler black painted and it came out very nicely!!

big 4 inch greddy intercooler:


When I first saw the car, I realised Alex was a fan of drilling in the body to fix the skirt and spat.. however, even after some adhesive promoter and 3m double side tape.. some trim came off the car:

So we had to drill some part of the body to fix them 100%. Also, I should mention that these parts were not ',bolt-on'' like the product state! Lots of grinding and trimming were needed to make them fit .

Ohhhh and you remember what happened with the repair of the bumper !? you know the reparation wasn't well done first.. so instead of wasting more time on the repaired bumper, the owner decided to buy a brand new one from greddy usa.... well look how the bumper arrived at the bodyshop!! Man, he is so unlucky!! The guy pay twice the price to have a brand new bumper shipped and that's how he got it:

GREDDY USA have been total douchebag about it saying it was our fault and coming up with stupid excuse like we didn't keep the box..instead.. why don't you put bubble wrap worth 10$ all over the bumper ultra-expensive (1200$us) so we're sure thing like that don't happens. No bubble wrap was found on the bumper. a total disgrace. Shitty company I hope everyone who read this won't support greddy anymore !!! Way to treat their customer..... seriously screw them.

Alex, i had to repair it, but somehow the reparation didn't hold up for more than 50 kms.. not sure if the repair wasn't perfect or the paint too soft, but it only took 50 kms to put a solid crack at the exact same spot.

At the moment of writing this i haven't found a solution to this problem. we'll look into it ( either we try to fill the cracked paint or get it repainted again)

Car is almost ready.. its time for me to enter the play!









So i get to meet the car again, the painter called me asking me to come polish the trunk before we put the wing and won't be able to wet-sand it later one without removing the wing again.

Initial condition: missing a ton of clear reflection.. let see what we can do:

Process:
Rupes air-powered sanding machines ( we use the 3 ans 6 inch machine)
3m wet sanding paper
1 inch spot air powered machine
meguiars and 3m sanding and finishing paper
3m masking tape
Deflesko 6000 advanced gauge for paint reading on metal and alumium
Defelsko 200B gauge for reading fiberglass
3M sun gun
LED torch light
Rupes bigfoot for finishing and Makita rotary for compounding
Menzerna , HD and Meguiars polish/compound
Cquartz Nano-coating Finest
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff lol...

Orange peel:

Here's the difference between a finer grit sanding on the left and a after 2 sanding pass ( one beeing coarser and one finer) :