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Today on Muscle car, get the lowdown on fixing your car's finish. As Rick and Tommy show you how to correct some common paint problems. Plus, Rick takes a trip back to 1971 at this one of a kind muscle car museum.

Come on down to Tim Wellborn and that's for Crazy Rick. We have a Arstas RT S. If you know your ABC S can sign your name, I will sell you a car.

Hey guys, welcome to Muscle car. You know, most of us have owned vehicles with or shall we say less than perfect finishes. But what a lot of people don't realize is that the flaws seen in that finish? Well, it can be fixed using just a few basic techniques, some simple materials. You can repair things like runs dry spots and orange peel. You can take a basic paint job and make it look great.

We've duplicated several common paint problems here on this hood.

This is what the paint is supposed to look like. Nice and slick, but we've got some orange peel, some dry spray,

some trash in the paint and one nasty run, but all this stuff is fixable. And we're gonna show you guys how it's done.

All of these problems can be fixed using various abrasives. Now, there's a baffling array of materials out there to choose from, but they all have one basic thing in common. They remove material to get a flat surface. Now, the bigger the problem, the

more aggressive you have to get with it and it doesn't get much more aggressive than a razor blade and nib file and 600 grid. But you can also cause a lot of damage in a big hurry using these three materials. So we'll give you guys a low down on what to do and what not to do with those in a second. Now, once you get the major flaws flattened out, you can start moving into your finer grids like the 1000 grit and the 1500 grit. Now, these are three M hook a two pads and they're designed to attach on to ad a

using almost a Velcro style, which is nice because you can flip back and forth between your different grits as you're going

from there, we can go to a block with 1500 grit, 2000 grit, 2500 grit and some people even go to a 3000. Now, at this point, the abrasives get so fine, they have to put them in liquid form, otherwise known as CAL

pounds that goes from the most aggressive

to the medium cut all the way down to the final glaze and also notice the caps are color matched. Trash is any unwanted material in the paint. It can be dust, debris, hair or even an insect. It's one of the worst looking paint defects, but it's one of the easiest to fix.

The nice thing about using a razor blade on trash is you can be very precise. You only end up having to send a small area, which is nice if you only have one or two spots that need repair.

Once I got the spot leveled out, I blended it with AD A to get the shine back. I'm buffing it with the compound.

It's that easy and you never know it was even there. I prefer the razor blade method, but you can use a nib file.

It takes a little longer and is more expensive. But some people like them, it's just a matter of preference. Finish it out the same way. It's with the razor blade. Another problem you can fix with the razor is a run and they can be challenging. You gotta make sure the run is dried all the way through or you'll just dig it out and cause more work.

Don't try to literally cut the run off, scrape it a little at a time with the edge of the blade to reduce the risk of the ends tearing up the clear. It helps to bend the razor blade into a slight U shape. Keep scraping until it's perfectly flat with a run this size. It will take a while but just have patience.

Next wets in with progressively finer grits ending up with 2500.

It

finish it out the same way as we did for the trash with a buffer and compound

these techniques take some time. But the results can be amazing

when you're dealing with trash and runs. Sometimes you've got to get pretty aggressive but what about more subtle defects?

We'll show you how to deal with more paint problems coming up next

and later. Crazy Rick is on the loose. We have yellow, we have green, we even have pink. Don't you just hate those pushy car salesmen?

Hey guys, welcome back, Tommy. Took care of the trash in the run. But this hood has some texture issues that can also be repaired with abrasives,

namely orange peel and dry spray. Now, they can look similar, but there can be an important difference with orange peel. The top layer of clear has an uneven texture that can be fixed by removing some of the material. But dry spray can indicate the clear is thin in spots. So if you start sanding it down, there may not be enough material to work with and you could get into the base coat. Now, it can be really difficult to tell which one you've got just by looking. So how do you tell? Well, really, there's only two ways either you laid it down yourself. So, you know what's on there or you grab a piece of sandpaper, start sanding and hope that you don't hit base coat. Because if you see color come up, there's only one way to fix it and that's respray the area.

That's why my personal policy is never, ever cut and rub anything that I didn't lay down.

As you said, you can kind of tell by the way the paper feels when you actually have it smooth,

but to double check, just pull the paper off

and you can squeegee it

looking good.

And that's how you can knock down the texture by hand. It's cheap and effective. Now, if you have ad A with the right pad on it, you can do it a whole lot faster. It's a little more expensive. But if you have a whole carter deal, this is the way to go.

D A paper comes in grits ranging from 600 to 3000. And generally speaking, the rougher, the paint is when you start the coarser grit you need to start with.

Now D A works great for flat panels. But remember, don't ever let that D A roll over an edge because it'll cut through that in a heartbeat. Same thing rolling over edges like this on the side of the hood, you're basically taking all the force from that pad and distributing it right across one narrow little section. You'll cut through that too quick,

you know, your surface is flat when you get a uniform whitish. Look.

Now, one of the thing you want to watch for when you dry sand in with the D A is these little guys right here. What happens is as you're sanding,

the dry clear comes off and it'll stick back together on your pad and create hard spots. These hard spots can actually act just like dirt between your sandpaper and the surface and create these little scratches. Those are a pain in the butt to sand back out.

But once you have the surface flat, go back to wet sanding by hand. Since I used 1000 grid on the D A, I'm starting with 1500 grid. Follow it up by 2500

A. Buffing is the last step in every technique that we've shown you today and it can even be used as a stand alone system to rejuvenate an older paint job. Now, like I said, earlier, compounds come in three different levels. The first level is really aggressive. It takes off a lot of material leaves some pretty nasty swirl marks. Level two isn't nearly as aggressive, but it does still leave swirl marks. Level three, removes virtually no material at all and it'll give you a nice clean, clear finish.

I'm gonna start with level one.

Now, one more thing, make sure you're using a buffer and not a grinder buffers run at lower RPM s than grinders. And if you try to use a grinder to polish. You're gonna build up too much heat and burn your paint.

Make sure not to run the pad dry. The compound acts as a lubricant and without it, the pad will heat up, turn abrasive and start removing chunks of paint. This is known as burning,

use each stage of compound until you no longer see a change, then move on to the next.

Now, I know it may seem a little strange to attack a mostly shiny paint job with a bunch of sandpaper and compounds. But remember sometimes you need to take a step backwards before you can go forwards. And if you don't believe me,

check out the results.

I can't argue with that

up. Next. Rick visits the dealer showroom of his dreams. This is all me right here. Why don't we just get you at it and go for a little test drive here. Sounds good to me. All right. Go

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guys, if you ever wish that you could go back in time and visit a car dealership during the heyday of the muscle car era with all the big engines, rare options and vibrant colors. Well, guess what? Now you can Tim Wellborn Muscle Car Museum.

It's located in Alexander City, Alabama. In what used to be an old Chevy dealership. Tim is painstakingly recreated the look and feel of a seventies car dealer right down to the vintage window tags.

Now, of course, the cars aren't really for sale, but you sure can dream.

Hello.

I'm Tim Welburn. Hi, Rick Bacon. Pleasure to meet you, man. It's some crazy cool digs you got around here. Hey, we, we, we people like you makes it worth having them here waiting on

you, you

know, to come in. So what are you looking for today? Well, back in the day I had a 68 chargers triple black RT and it had a 440 in it, but I couldn't afford the gas in it. So I had to sell it, but I'd love to get another one. You know what? We got? Just the car for you around here. Let's just go look and see what we can find. You want a Boss nine Ls 66 pack.

He

just a big black RT would be great.

Tim's got something for everyone all in pristine original condition.

I learned a lot about the birds and the bees. Super birds. And super bees that is

like how the nose cone and wing were slightly different shade than the car because back then they were painted at a different shop.

The bill quality on the superb birds are really sloppy. It, it was all to get it out the door so you could count them and you could race them on Sunday in NASCAR.

The 71 Chargers are his pride and joy. He still got his dad's car. The one that started it all. A hemi

Rt

waiting for that car. The anticipation of the car arriving at the do

ship seemed like it took you forever. But uh when it arrived, you just fell in love with it.

Now he's got over 40 1971 Charger RT S and Super Beats with just about every color and option available. Only 85 came with hemi

that year and he's got 24 of them. The largest collection anywhere

Bobby Isaac's 69 Daytona Charger is also on deck. Yeah, the same one that broke 28 land speed records,

but like any car lot. It's not all Mopar. He does have a few. We'll call him trade ins. There's a red hot 442, a patriotic

an SST

and a T bird just to name a few. And the inventory it's always changing.

There's even a service center with a one of a kind barn find waiting to be restored and what dealership would be complete without a fully stocked parts department.

Sweet

Rick. We've looked about every color in here but you mentioned you like black. So this, what do you think about this, this charger right here? This is me, right? 440 magnum Charger RT just a couple of years after the one you had

and

we got air conditioning.

Uh but mainly boy, look at the sun roof that that's gonna be right down your alley, I can tell. So this, this is all me right here. Why don't we just get you in it and go for a little test drive here. Sounds good to me. All right, go.

Hey, by the way, you're concerned about gas mileage.

This one's got 323 gears in it. So that's gonna help you on that gas mileage a whole lot. It's not on the front side, uh, price to sell if I remember correctly. How about you wanna sell it? Th this is one of our specials today.

We,

we, we don't have these kind of specials every day. I want you to know that.

Well, what do you think, Rick? I gotta be honest with you, man. I love the car. I mean, it's me. It's all I could tell that whenever you were driving down the road, that smile on your face, that tells me a lot. We're gonna make this deal. I need surgery to get this off my face. Do you, do you do trade ins at all?

We do trade ins. You do because I have an all original low mileage. One owner, original paint

company, Astral Band.

Oh,

this thing

is that what you were talking about?

It may not look like much, but she's a runner. Well, I tell you what, we won't rule out anything but let's go in and sit down and talk about some options.

And hell, by the way, you do know how to mechanic on Saturdays and Sundays.

I

know we'll

work it off somehow, man. We'll get something done.

Come on down, I'm Tim Wellborn and that's for Crazy Rick. We have a Arstas RT S. If you know your ABC S can sign your name, I will sell you a car.

It is extra value time.

We have every psychedelic color of the rainbow. We have yellow, we have green, we even have pink.

We got hot cars for the parents and hot dogs for the kids. There you go. Little girl.

Just look for the sign because that's a sign of a great deal.

All right, seriously, don't get my charger yet.

All right. Well, I may not have gotten my dream car, but I sure had a blast. Reliving the glory days of the muscle car era.

It's a trip. I won't soon forget

you're watching Muscle Car for a DVD copy of this episode. Just go to Power Block tv.com and order your copy for just 595 plus shipping and handling. Start your own muscle car collection delivered right to your door from the power block,

restore your classic pickup SUV or suburban at shop classic truck, parts.com. We stock anything and everything for Ford, Chevy GM and Dodge trucks, complete bodies, complete interiors, fuel systems, hard parts, chrome trim accessories and more log on now and save.

My power block is fueled by you. Join groups, post build pics

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You are the star

at my Power block.com.

Hey, welcome back. We showed you how to make a new paint job look great. But what about bringing back to life? An old one, believe it or not. This 35 year old single stage paint is perfect for buffing out

the car it came off of is still in good shape and the paint is actually pretty decent. Putting the shine back on it will give this car back its mojo

the hood from the buick on the other hand, is a lot more difficult to polish. That's because it's a single stage metallic. Now, this type of finish doesn't respond very well to heavy buffing or sanding. That's because as the finish is originally applied, the metallic sinks deeper into the paint as it dries. Therefore, as you sand or polish off more it exposes is more metallic and that can give you a splotchy finish. Another wrench in the process is the amount of oxidation you have and how faded the pigments are, they're both gonna have an effect on how even it's gonna look when you're done.

Basically, the bottom line is, don't expect perfection. You can get it looking a lot better, but it's never gonna look new again.

I gave it a good scrubbing with soap and water before starting with some 1500 grit on a block

with single stage paint. Expect to see some color come off.

The idea here is to remove the oxidized paint and not the good paint underneath. So pay attention to the color of the panel as you sand

when it starts to look darker, that means you're getting through the dead paint,

then you're on to putting the shine back to it. I'm taping the edges off to keep from removing too much material also known as burn through.

Well, time is polishing out his blue baby over there. I took a buffer to this green to show you guys what happens when you try to take a polisher to a single stage metallic. Now, the lighter ring around the edge is what I'd want the whole thing to look like. I was in the safe zone just on the top layer of paint. The dark area over here is where I got too deep and got into the metallic. Now, this is caused by an inconsistency in how the solids are suspended in the paint. It's the same reason why touching that scratches on metallics is more difficult. You can make them look better, but they're never gonna go away.

Now, we're lucky enough to have a full on PPG mixing bank in our shop here. But if you're not that lucky, go down to your local auto paint supply store and they can match it and mix it up for you. I split this up into two cups. One of them is straight out of the mixing bank and the other one is reduced 1 to 1 just like it would be if you're gonna spray it out of a gun.

I did this to show you how important it is to have the correct viscosity in your touch up paint. If it's too thin, when you put it on, it'll darken up as it dries and leave a big old black line going down your scratch. It's just gonna end up looking worse.

Now, a touch up paints the thicker, the better, especially with metallics. Now, reason being with a thicker paint,

the metallics will have less of a tendency to drop to the bottom and turn dark on you.

I know some of you guys are really admiring my custom touch up brush. Well, I found an old folded up piece of masking paper works better than a real brush. Plus it's a whole lot cheaper. Now, once your little touch up job is dried, nib over with some 2000

it hand polish it step back and admire your work.

I've polished this deck lid the same way we finished the new paint job and as you can see, it sure looks a whole lot better than it did before repairing a scratch or chip on this kind of paint is the same process as Rick showed you earlier, but you don't have the metallics to deal with. Well, I've worked up a pretty good thirst, so I'm gonna go grab a colon. So, until next week y'all keep between the ditches.
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