[DETAIL] Alfa Romeo GT (Black) BGD

[orgigeorgie]

Here we have the detailing of a black GT.

The owner of this car is one with vast experience in Alfas and has owned many TS's, GTA's and GT's. This particular example has a genuine 25K Km. It was owned by an elderly lady who used it to ferry her gran kids to and from school. Pretty cool car for a Granny.

Unfortunately she wasn't so keen on keeping it clean and having lived its life outside it was in pretty shocking condition.  To further make this harder on us we only had 10 hours to complete the Job as it was being presented at the Busso night only a couple weeks back. Fortunately for me the owner was very keen to help and perfect his own detailing skills which meant we had two men working on the job.

Initially the paint felt like sandpaper and he jokingly suggested I sharpen my drill bits on it before we made it all smooth. We begun by washing the car very thoroughly. As per regime the car was rinsed to remove whatever we could off before we marred it even further.

It was then snow-foamed to suspend any large contaminants left on the paint. We then washed it by hand using the 2 bucket method. We had to change the rinse water 3 times!!

SnowFoam:


Wash:


Next stage was claying the surface. Usually this takes around 40min - 1 hour on a car. It took 2 guys, 2 clay bars, over 1 hour to do. Amazing but eventually what contamination could be removed was removed. The next stage was a hand polish to help remove anything left the clay bar did not pick up. This killed us in time.


ClayBar:


3 hours in. We begin to tape the car up. A quick measure of paint and we were ready to go. Everything was in good condition ready to begin the cutting process.

[orgigeorgie]

Tape up:


Quick Check:

[orgigeorgie]

The paint condition prior:

[orgigeorgie]

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I spent probably close to one hour on the front fender trying to figure out what combination of pad/compound would work best on this car. After eventually coming to a nice combo we had achieved a semi reasonable finish.

[orgigeorgie]

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We continued with this process on every panel going through every single one of my pads I had brought for the day.




Time was running short and we had to cut the detail short. I had however coached the owner enough to continue anything else that needed to be done. Luckily all that was left was some finishing touches. Over all the car was in 100% better condition with still some deeper imperfections that will require further attention down the track.

[orgigeorgie]

The finished product and some 50/50's.







Alfa black is a very beautiful colour and holds its depth very well, however it is a very high maintenance paint. Eventually this car will be coated with a hard resin to protect its finish and make the maintenance easier.

If you have any further questions on how to maintain black paint, or what you can do to save your car from looking like the above feel free to ask her or just email me at info@billygoatdetailing.com

[orgigeorgie]

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I apologize for the multiple posts. The images may have been too big and the forum kept giving me a 404 error.

[Cool Jesus]

Fantastic work. I'm sure it looks even better in the flesh.