After doing a substantial amount of work on his VeloCiti, which included a full detail, Dewald (Dotdubb) saw the benefits of having a car detailed.
Now, I’m not just talking about the presentation, gloss & protection, but the effortless & easy cleaning that’s associated.
Now, him & I have been chatting about this little old girl for some time, and there was talk of a full body respray.
I for one believe old cars such as this must have its little flaws, imperfections & battle scars. It gives it some character & tells a story of the life it’s had.
Needless to say, I convinced him to rather have me give it a once over, brighten up the paintwork & give it some protection, and have him enjoy it for a bit before just giving it a new paint job.
I get a call from him saying he’s dropping the car off with me, which was a bit short notice, but I always make a plan.
I inspect the car, and discover/observe the following:
- Car has been resprayed
- Paint was applied thick and fast, not allowing sufficient curing time in between coats, meaning it has now left a curing rash
- Poor surface preparation
- Quite a substantial amount of body filler
- Wet sanding & polishing was done half-heartedly
- Too much heat during the polishing stage was introduced, and sanding lines in the paint collapsed creating long valleys in the paint
- Roof was never wetsanded & polished, which means a lot of overspray & rashing
All that aside, it was clear I could not deliver perfection, I could only get it as best I could.
Here's an example of what the entire car looked like
Paint thickness gauge would be useless to me here, as there’s so much filler & layers of paint on here, so I was flying blind in terms of how much paint I could take off safely.
With old cars like these, you can’t just HP rinse, or even hose it down by flooding the body with water. The gaps, seams & seals (Or lack thereof) would create a water nightmare you don’t want.
With the help of Sebz, we devised a plan of action.
We gave the car a 2BM wash, doing one panel at a time to minimise the amount of water introduced. Panels dried after the wash stage.
Car was given a light clay with a load of quick detailer to remove as much of the surface contam & oxidation as safely possible.
No APC or De-ironiser steps were carried out.
We opted to use a Cleaner wax, and for 2 reasons:
1- Introduce some nourishment into the oxidised paint with the carnuba to nourish & moisturise it a little
2- Cleaner wax & MF towel will clean a significant amount of contam & dead paint from the surface.
Applied, left to sit while applying to the rest of the car & buffed off, followed by the same procedure for a second time. This gave us a much better base to work from. The safest way we could think of removing contam & nourishing the paint in preparation for paint enhancement.
The following day, we played around with a few combos for the correction, getting the oxidised dead layer of paint off, as well as swirls & marring.
Not chasing perfection & removing RIDS, for the fear of striking through the paint, we decided to do localised compounding in really bad areas to improve most of the deep scratches.
While Sebz had his hands full with the DA & Polish/pad combo doing the large body surfaces, I got cracking on the small areas & curves of the car where the 6” DA couldn’t get in or got bogged down.
I used the Rotary with various extension shafts, and pads ranging from 1”-3” (HUGE thanks to Joey & Mark from Turtle wax South Africa for hooking me up, you guys truly are heroes without capes).
Car was wiped down, and given a coat of Fusso coating, which will give it loads of protection for the next year at least, although, knowing Dewald, the car will get used maybe twice a month & spend its time in the garage, so it should be good for another 2 years easily.
Wheels were coated with Collinite & tyres dressed.
I will spend a bit more time on the Alluminium trim & the chrome to get those a little better before he collects.
Being on a short timeline, I was not able to take many pictures, so I apologise for that. Enjoy the few I did manage to take
Before:
50/50:
After:
All-in-all, I think she looks damn good now.
It has more of a "Extremely well cared for DKW" , as opposed to "Perfectly kept/Restored DKW" look.
Let's keep in mind, this is a 57 year old girl, she's had a good life
And, pictures were taken roughly around the same time of day (Before & After), so you see quite a substantial improvement in reflection & gloss.
She wasn't ruined to begin with, so, the enhancement worked a charm.
Thanks for looking
1960 Auto Union DKW - by SeventyFourFour
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Re: 1960 Auto Union DKW - by SeventyFourFour
Epic!
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Re: 1960 Auto Union DKW - by SeventyFourFour
Awesome detail and a great write up bud. Thanks for sharing!!!!
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Re: 1960 Auto Union DKW - by SeventyFourFour
BEautiful work man.
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Re: 1960 Auto Union DKW - by SeventyFourFour
That's some epic work G-Man. Looking forward to more detailing threads from you. Make em longer and more involved. I need some tea and cookie time with detailing. seeing as @lawrence no longer does nice threads.
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Re: 1960 Auto Union DKW - by SeventyFourFour
Came out great!
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