Marc@AutoLavish
Club Sponsor
Certain cars bring their owners love at first site, while others slowly grow on their owners; creating a long-term bond that many feel is the pinnacle of a good relationship. This particular 1993 Mazda RX-7 has been both for her owner. He's not the original owner: he purchased the vehicle at a young age, and throughout the years has modified it, torn it apart, rebuild things, acquired new parts, added updates, stripped it to a shell, had it repainted, and put it all back together again. The result is a beautifully modded and well kept car that, with a little work, came back to as close to like-new as possible.
Upon the initial inspection/estimate, there were several areas key to the owner: contamination of the paint, light swirls, his aftermarket wheels, and the leather seats. Once we arrived and set-up, the after-market wheels were the first thing to receive attention. This was easier as the owner still had his track slicks mated to the car, leaving us complete access to the pretty ones. Because it was accessible, we wanted to insure the inside got cleaned as well.
Meguiar's Wheel Brightener was used on the inside of the rims to make quick work of the grime. Jacob agitated with a shmitt before rinsing the back-sides clean.
A similar process was used on the fronts, but they were treated with Chemical Guy's Stick Wheel Gel diluted 3:1
In the mean time, I began applying Meguiar's APC 4:1 and Meguiar's Super Degreaser 4:1 to various body parts to pre-treat them prior to washing. Much of the lower portions had rubber and grime built up from the last open-track day.
One other such area to pre-treat was the dirty/stained gas cap.
All clean minus the stains.
With the wheels drying, the body began her bath. Chemical Guy's Citrus Wash & Clear with a slight amount of APC added helped to strip loose grime prior to anything touching the paint.
After a gentle wash, it was apparent there was A LOT of contamination. It turns out the owner hasn't had a coat of wax on the paint since the vehicle was repainted its original color two years ago. Jacob started claying while I worked Leatherique into the front seats. Allowing the Leatherique to sit and do its magic while we finished all things exterior worked out quite well.
Post-claying, a quick rewash insured proper inspection of the paint without interference from dry clay lubricants. The owner was also nice enough to pull off the tail lights so they could be properly dealt with.
Having two pros working makes a huge difference. While one begins on one project, another can handle other issues. In this case, Jacob took care of carefully taping all edges while I worked the headlights
before
after
taping finished
An area I was looking forward to was the taillights. In the initial inspection I could tell how old, faded, swirled, and used they looked. The head-lights and fog-lights had been more recently replaced, so weren't all too bad. The tails on the other hand needed some work. The severe swirling caused them to look grey and heavily faded with no gloss or clarity.
Some people play the guitar... I polish things out
Rock-on
Even in the shade you can see the difference in clarity and gloss.
Here we show the difference between a polished out tail-light in the shade versus a clean but non-polish tail in the shade. Notice gloss, clarity, quality of reflections, and how tight the camera flash is compared to the two. I tried to get several angles to show this isn't a camera trick - it's a true night-and-day difference in parts which does a lot to bring a car back to life.
Upon the initial inspection/estimate, there were several areas key to the owner: contamination of the paint, light swirls, his aftermarket wheels, and the leather seats. Once we arrived and set-up, the after-market wheels were the first thing to receive attention. This was easier as the owner still had his track slicks mated to the car, leaving us complete access to the pretty ones. Because it was accessible, we wanted to insure the inside got cleaned as well.
Meguiar's Wheel Brightener was used on the inside of the rims to make quick work of the grime. Jacob agitated with a shmitt before rinsing the back-sides clean.
A similar process was used on the fronts, but they were treated with Chemical Guy's Stick Wheel Gel diluted 3:1
In the mean time, I began applying Meguiar's APC 4:1 and Meguiar's Super Degreaser 4:1 to various body parts to pre-treat them prior to washing. Much of the lower portions had rubber and grime built up from the last open-track day.
One other such area to pre-treat was the dirty/stained gas cap.
All clean minus the stains.
With the wheels drying, the body began her bath. Chemical Guy's Citrus Wash & Clear with a slight amount of APC added helped to strip loose grime prior to anything touching the paint.
After a gentle wash, it was apparent there was A LOT of contamination. It turns out the owner hasn't had a coat of wax on the paint since the vehicle was repainted its original color two years ago. Jacob started claying while I worked Leatherique into the front seats. Allowing the Leatherique to sit and do its magic while we finished all things exterior worked out quite well.
Post-claying, a quick rewash insured proper inspection of the paint without interference from dry clay lubricants. The owner was also nice enough to pull off the tail lights so they could be properly dealt with.
Having two pros working makes a huge difference. While one begins on one project, another can handle other issues. In this case, Jacob took care of carefully taping all edges while I worked the headlights
before
after
taping finished
An area I was looking forward to was the taillights. In the initial inspection I could tell how old, faded, swirled, and used they looked. The head-lights and fog-lights had been more recently replaced, so weren't all too bad. The tails on the other hand needed some work. The severe swirling caused them to look grey and heavily faded with no gloss or clarity.
Some people play the guitar... I polish things out
Rock-on
Even in the shade you can see the difference in clarity and gloss.
Here we show the difference between a polished out tail-light in the shade versus a clean but non-polish tail in the shade. Notice gloss, clarity, quality of reflections, and how tight the camera flash is compared to the two. I tried to get several angles to show this isn't a camera trick - it's a true night-and-day difference in parts which does a lot to bring a car back to life.
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