This Honda Prelude is a sweet little car. I've always loved it when it came out back '97. My friend asked me to come with him to check out a Prelude he was interested in all the way in Ajax. It was a sweet ride, handled well and was well-kept in the mechanical department; the paint, however, wasn't so well maintained. He opted to buy it anyway since he always loved preludes as well and it was for a good price.
However, the guy who sold my friend the car tried to spray paint his hood and it was just a complete disaster. There was a ton of over-spray on the fenders, the pillars, the side mirrors, etc. My friend just got a hood from some shop (paint was in terrible condition) and got the fenders repainted. The car looks alright, but it was in desperate need of some correction. So we got to work by just giving her a nice wash, claying it to get rid of all the waxes and oils and check the condition of the paint. It was bad.
I haven't had any experience in polishing except for watching some videos and a ton of advice and pointers from b00stedmk6 (thanks man!). After my first pass with the polish, the results really surprised me. Although I'd like to have the paint flawless, the results really were surprising. The paint actually looked black now, instead of being all hazy. There were a lot of markings that stayed, like rock chips, pits, deep scratches, really bad water etching, etc. that stayed after the polishing stages and some swirls even persisted after 2 passes, but wow! The results still were awesome! Just check out the pictures below.
Supplies Used
Optimum No Rinse Wash & Shine
2 Bucket Wash Method with Grit Guards
Optimum PowerClean (1:3 dilution)
Riccardo Yellow Clay (Optimum No Rinse Wash & Shine as Clay Lube)
Porter Cable 7424XP
Orange Pad
Menzerna PF2500 PowerFinish
Wolfgang Deep Gloss Sealant
Tons of paint damage! I was kind of scared to see the results as I wasn't sure it would have turned out well or not.
Another picture of the heavy paint damage.
Another picture of the heavy paint damage.
Prepping for the correction stages.
First ever try with paint correction. I missed a spot since that area is a bit curved so I wasn't sure how to do it the first time. But the results were really nice considering how bad the paint was on the hood of the prelude.
Although the picture didn't pick up the deep micro-swirls and deep scratches, this is one of the good parts of the hood that turned out really nicely!
Another part that turned out really nicely!
50/50 shot. As you can see, there are some swirls left that I wasn't able to take out, even with a 2nd pass.
Look at the gloss difference! Now that is looking more like black!
This fender was recently painted, but as you can see the paint condition was terrible.
Another picture showing the paint condition of the fender.
This is a close-up of part of the passenger door; completely destroyed.
50/50 shot of the passenger door. As you can see, there are some really bad scratches, pits, scuffs that obviously couldn't be correctly without some new paint and sanding. But, it turned out really nice! Please excuse the left-over polish
Another picture of the passenger door.
All done the passenger side; looks nice!
Another shot of the passenger side.
I actually forgot where this was taken. There some nasty marks that were stubborn and pretty much impossible to take out with my combination of supplies.
50/50 of the trunk, turned out alright. If you saw this in person, it would be okay but there were still some deep scratches left that this polish couldn't touch. But the majority of the swirls were gone and the paint was left with a nice glossy finish.
Bad, bad swirls in the paint on the trunk lid. These ones were actually really deep and maybe 10% were left, even after a 2nd pass.
Another angle of the terrible swirls.
I tried polishing off the head-light as well. I'm not too sure if you can tell, but the top part is where I polished and the bottom was left alone (it was pretty hazy). I'm surprised it worked this well.
I'll take some more pictures tomorrow since the car is still sitting in his garage. Just have to finish polishing some spots that I might have missed, put a nice wax sealant on and then out goes the car for some nice glamour shots.
Stay tuned!
