This beautiful 1976 BMW 2002 was in need of some attention. Much of the car had been repainted over twenty years ago, leaving plenty of time for unsightly marring and light scratches to make their way into the finish, dulling its luster and making a real mess of its appearance when viewed under sunlight. Other areas had been recently repainted due to rust issues, and unfortunately the fresh paint had been sanded and improperly polished, leaving plenty of rotary swirls and sand scratches in need of correction. Given the age of the paint and the bubbles forming on the hood, we decided it was best to stick to a one-step correction, remove about 80% of the swirling and marring, and in the process greatly improve the paint’s shine and depth while leaving enough paint for good durability in the years to come. In the pictures taken before work began, you can see that the car had some shine, but a certain haziness could be seen in the reflection of the dim overhead lights, while LED lighting revealed a surface which was heavily marred.
Before:
Here the rotary swirls in the roof’s paint could be seen even in the dim lighting of the garage:
Under LED lighting the true extent of the damage to the paintwork could be seen:
After careful evaluation of the paint’s response to various pad and polish combinations starting with the least aggressive first, it was determined that Rupes fine grade pads could be used with a mixture of Meguiar’s D300 and HD Polish to achieve the desired correction rate (~80%+). A very small amount of micro-marring was present after this process, so the same polish mixture was used this time with Lake Country black foam finishing pads to fully refine the paint, improving shine and bringing out a deeper shade of red. All correction work was performed with the Rupes 21 MKII and 75E polishers.
After:
Pitting from sand and stone impacts would remain, along with the bubbling and some deeper scratches, but the finish was in a vastly improved state after correction:
The roof now looked great under the overhead lights; no haziness:
