Forum members car the detailing work

[TangoMan]

One of the members contacted me recently to see if I could do some work on his Bentley Continental T after recommendations from other users on the forum, out of my appreciation for this recommendation danny has agreed to let me post up the progress on this fantastic car. The car is a 6.75 L Garrett-turbocharged engine Bentley produced in 1996. I will post progress over several threads and several days, the start being here and split off into two due to restrictions in image posting.

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There have been only 350 of these produced and all were hand built. The T is a Continental R but with shorter wheelbase and widened wheel arches to improve handling.

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The interior has an engine-turned dash with chrome-finished instruments.

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[TangoMan]

So to continue;

paintwork was okay but showing a little age due poor washing and some slight weathering, also it being hand painted there were imperfections within the paintwork, some of which I could remove but I do not want to take chances with popping through to the colour base.

so day 1 started off by cleaning up the car to see what was hiding under those years of wax. Looking a little closer there were some fine scratches along the off side rear;
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These were fairly light so I concentrated on reducing these first, so first step was to take a reading;
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407 was an average number around this area and not surprising as the car had been hand painted originally. On a modern car I would expect this value to be around 100. On this basis I would work on smoothing the paintwork off by no more than 10%, that would give me around 40 microns to work with which would be enough to round off these scratches making them much less obvious. So I started with some mild cutting compounds and worked my way up until the paint started to respond. 3M fast cutting compound with a mild cut wool pad seemed to do the trick, no surprises here as this was paint before the EU got to it.

Half an hour of cutting polishing and finishing I had managed to find a combo that would suit for doing the remaining car.
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Close inspection here shows where I have not removed the scratches but smoothed them off so they are much less noticeable.
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This was 30 microns at the most severe points, I was happy with this result knowing that I would not be risking breaching the clear coat but at the same time removing most of the defects and hiding scratches.

Next step was to start on the boot and then concentrate on the roof which was showing signs of oxidisation which I will continute with on Tuesday. I will post up the results as I go along.

Overall I am very excited about this car, it is a classic which I think has real potential to shine, the customer is also happy for me to spend the time on getting this paintwork right so I have a great opportunity to show off my work on a lovely car.

[TangoMan]

Funny day today, peeing it down on the way up, got there to find sunshine! So made the decision to drive the car out of its garage and work out in the sunshine, wrong move as I found out later.
Ooh, I just love starting big engines, the whole car moved at she started, low burble out and outside to be blessed with sunshine although a little cold.
Today I wanted to get the bulk of the cutting done, the paintwork had a good few scratches on it which polishing would not remove so I had to get rid of these first.

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Cutting was slow as there are a hell of a lot of edges to this car, ones I hadn’t even realised were there. The coachwork on this car is fascinating; you think you are on a smooth panel when it suddenly starts to crease and then move in to a fold! Modern cars are curves but this is edges, tight ones which I have to watch.

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So a good chunk of the morning was spent on smoothing off the bonnet then I moved onto the headlamp surrounds.

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These have dulled a little probably because they are plastic, paint on plastic behaves differently as it is softer so the porter cable and some hand polishing would be best for these complex bits. But first some tape.

[TangoMan]

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Tight spots I used a hand polishing pad with some Poorboys SSR2.5 which is aggressive but breaks down quickly.

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The results were good and didn’t take as long as I had expected.

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Then onto the doors, these had some deeper scratches on them, still a fair bit of paint to work with but best to round off rather than flatten. All the rubber trim was masked off and ready to go.

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[TangoMan]

The cutting pad had removed the scratches, but left swirls, this was not a problem as I was concentrating on removing defects first before polishing. Many marks on hard paint so it will need three passes; cut, polish then glaze.

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Its now about three o’clock and the sun has hidden behind some clouds, so I brought the car back indoors. The florescent light started to show another story, what scratches I thought I had removed from the bonnet were still there, the cutting pad and compound had not done its job, out with the wool pad and a more aggressive compound. As I polished away I though about what went wrong; The side panels were fine but the bonnet was not playing ball. Then it clicked, the sides had been resprayed, and the bonnet was original, this was confirmed with the paint thickness guage. Plus the original paintwork would be cellulose based so it was be much harder. Oh well, three passes of a wool pad and I was seeing the defects go, total of 20 microns on 280 microns of paint, that was enough. Surprising lack of swirls after using the wool pad on the bonnet but time was dragging on and it was time to pack up ready for the M25.

Here is a close up of some of the deeper scratches o the bonnet before using the wool pad, these were smoothed off but not enough from the original cutting pad

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Anyway, continuation tomorrow hopefully getting all completed, I will also have Lorna with me where she can concentrate on tidying up the interior of the car.

[TangoMan]

Today was the final day, Lorna had done a great job of cleaning the leather interior and conditioning it, there was a surpising amount of dirt in the leather which she had pulled out using Meguires APC followed by some leather cleaner/conditioner. In the meantime I’d taken off the front grill and worked on getting some shine back into that chrome. All that was needed to be done now was a machine glaze and then the first coat of wax, I will be going back next week to add another coat of wax and continue with the next project but in the meantime some photo’s of the work.

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[TangoMan]

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Danny is very pleased with the work and so has commissioned me to start work on his other two toys and to be honest I am grateful, as this is a quiet time of year.

I personally think the car needs two more coats of Zymöl to bring out the real depth of colour in the paintwork, when this is done I will add some more pictures.