How to Detail Faded Paint by Hand (Paint Correction)

Hey guys, ChrisFix here! And today I'm going to show you how to

detail

and clean a dirty, neglected car like this one I just bought for five hundred dollars. If you missed the last episode, I'll link to it in the description. I showed you how I bought this. car for five hundred dollars. It wasn't running or driving. So I showed them how to diagnose the problem and then how to fix it. In total, we have four hundred dollars worth of parts and five hundred dollars for the car. So nine hundred dollars total and this car runs and drives wonderfully, but it's very ugly on the outside.

Look at this

paint

job. This

paint

job is filmed. It's rusty. It is discolored. It's all swirled up So I'm going to show you how to

detail

this and fix it with paint so we go from this to this wet, luscious, deep dark paint and look, and just look at that difference. This paint is really bad, but we're going to make it look amazing. And the best part is that you could do exactly what I'm doing after you're done watching this video and we're doing all of this at home by

hand

with simple, common products like these.

Nothing expensive that will break the bank. way you can go out and get the exact same results as this with your vehicle. So not only are we going to fix this

faded

paint and do a paint

correction

, but some paint jobs are more than repairable, like you can't fix this. No amount of polishing or compound can take this out. This is just due to the metal from the sun fading because it wasn't taken care of, so I'm going to show you how to paint this with a correct color spray paint. so we could go from this... to this!

Back home in your driveway, so this is going to be really amazing. But that's not just that, a lot of cars have this discolored plastic on the rear view mirrors or the discolored plastic that looks all gray down on the skid plates or on the body moldings and me. I'll show you how to restore this plastic. We are going to recover this plastic. We'll go from this to this and review this now. This will last at least two or three years and I will show you how we will do it and that's not all. I'll also show you how to do it.

Clean and detail your wheels and tires and more importantly how to remove those stubborn dirt spots, brake dust spots that get on your wheels, how to remove them. To get the wheels looking good again and then we'll restore the headlights a little bit. The headlights are a mess with this, the light output sucks. But the most important thing is that I'm going to show you how to do this very quickly and put a coating on it that will last about two years. That's really easy to apply. It's not like spray painting where you can mess it up.

I've been playing with that. I think you guys are going to like the results and finally we're going to go clean the inside of this car because it's a mess, it's not. comfortable to drive and we want to feel comfortable driving our own car. Now many of you in the last video asked me in the comments where did you find a car for five hundred dollars? How to find a project car? Let me show you and it's actually very simple to do this. All you have to do is go to your computer, go to the Internet and search for Auto Tempest.

This site is very useful because it searches all the different used car sales sites. in a single search. That way you won't waste time. So scroll down here. And now we want to set the minimum price to 200 or 250 because we want to eliminate all the people who put in $1.00 and who are looking for a trade or who are looking to part with their car. It's just a wild goose chase. So make sure you put 250 for the minimum price. That's a little trick and then $1200 for the top price. A $1200 car will cost less than $1000 90% of the time you always negotiate for these.

Otherwise everything is fine. Let's click search and check it out. Look at all these cars. Look at this, a Volkswagen Beetle asking $700, has 87,000 miles and something is wrong with the charging system, it's a good find, but there are a ton of cars here and you just look at the descriptions and click on the ones you want, I I mean the list. Go ahead and here is the car I ended up finding and it's that easy to find your own project car. He's asking for a thousand dollars. The description of it said that only the fuel pump was the bed.

So I went to see it and bought it for $500. So there you have it. Now you can find your own project car; The trick is 250 for the minimum price. So make sure you do it. I will leave a link to this website in the description. Auto Tempest has been amazing. Thank you very much for creating the website and supporting the video. And if you're looking for a project car, this is how I find mine. So let's get back to detailing this Trailblazer. And the first thing we are going to do is fix the broken and missing interior pieces.

So here, we were missing that plastic trim, same thing on the driver's side. And finally, we have a center console that doesn't want to get stuck. So, Go and fix that so you can see that the latch hook is broken, so let's unscrew these two screws that hold this plastic latch in and then out with the old broken latch and with the new one, now tighten the screws down so you're comfortable, very good. Let's try it Boom! Five dollars and thirty seconds later, we have a center console door that closes and that's really nice. It would be difficult to drive with that open.

Once that's done, let's move on to replacing the door trim and installing plastic trim like this. very easy. There are four tabs that you want to snap together. So just line it up and give it a good push until it clicks. And that's all you need to install a piece of trim like that and the same for the other side, except this one. side We have a seat memory button that clicks first and then we can push the door trim piece into the

hand

le so it clicks and look how nice it looks. We have our two pieces of trim inside, we have the The center console is working now.

Let's clean the inside. Cleaning the interior and getting great results is simple: first vacuum all the dirt from the carpet, then take your favorite carpet cleaner and spray the entire carpet. Next, take a plastic brush like this one and agitate the carpet. cleaner deep into the carpet Brushing that carpet will give you the extra cleaning results you want. So make sure you use the brush, then take a towel and wipe and absorb the carpet cleaner and all the dirt that comes with it. and finally vacuum the carpet one more time to remove the lint from the towel and the dirt we released from the carpet and check these results before and after.

Next, let's do the upholstery of the seat, which is covered in dried mud. So take your wood with soap. (dish soap and water) and spray the plastic. Then wipe it off with a paper towel and it will come off pretty easily, which is good. So here's the before and after of this coming out so well, and we're doing quick and easy details, nothing crazy, no super cleaning. So let's do the other side and here's the before and after. A little vacuuming makes a big difference. Now I've cleaned up the rest of the interior on the front, let's go to the back and I'll show you the mess we have here that we need to clean up and with a little editing magic.

Check it out. Nice and clean So, with the inside all nice and clean now, let's clean up the outside and this is going to be really cool. We have this old,

faded

paint. It looks horrible and we're going to bring it back to life using some compound and polish. Let me show you how. Now before correcting the paint, the first thing you should do is clean the car, so spray it with a little water to remove the dirt, then apply some car soap and if you don't have any. For a foam cannon, simply use a bucket of soapy water.

Next, clean the entire car with a microfiber wash mitt, be sure to work from top to bottom and remove as much dirt as you can, then rinse the car to remove all that soap and loose dirt, and finally dry the car. We could start with paint

correction

. Okay, and with the car completely dry and clean, let's make this paint look amazing! And I put a piece of tape here so you can see the difference between before and after, so we're going to clean this side up and keep this side the same way to see the difference.

So the process will be to use the compound first. This is the most aggressive. This will remove the most oxidized clear coat, but we can't stop there. Next we will use a polish. This is better. It's less aggressive and will make this shine really nice, give it that polished finish look and finally we'll put on a protective coat of wax to cover our newly finished shiny clear coat. So let's start with the compound and We are using a microfiber applicator pad that will allow the product to rub into the paint. Don't use a microfiber towel because it will absorb too much of the compound and won't work as efficiently.

So just spread the Apply the compound in a circular motion and then with medium pressure. Buff the compound into the paint and you can actually see the rusty layer coming off the applicator pad. So now buff the compound with a clean microfiber towel and look at that shine! Next, we move on to the polish. So flip the applicator pad over to get a fresh surface and add some polish. We're going to polish it the same way we did with the compound. The only difference is that polish is a finer abrasive. So just like when you sand you go from a coarse grit to a fine grit, same thing here and it's super simple, just buff it into the paint using medium pressure, and that's all there is to it. he.

Then we can polish it with a microfiber towel and the results obtained when polishing are permanent. It is not removed with soap or water. And finally our last step is to use a sealant or wax to protect the newly polished surface. So wax, let it dry for two minutes, so it's cloudy and then wax, finally let's remove the tape and see the comparison. What a difference before and after. I can't believe that, look at this, look at this reflection in this painting and then look at the old paint. What a difference that is and that's just a little bit of effort.

We were composed, we were polished. and then we waxed it and that's what we got. Okay, man, this looks great. This car will look soaked. Let me finish with the rest of the car Hmm. Now, this polishing and waxing process is super simple, but it's definitely exhausting. You need medium to heavy pressure when you're buffing and buffing, so doing it by hand is totally doable. But again, you're going to get a good workout for the day. And take a look at this car. Look how good this paint job looks. It looks incredible. And I don't know if you noticed, but this truck is missing center caps.

So for five dollars each, I bought them from the junkyard and that's so much better. We'll still have to clean them, but now we're focused on the paint. Check out this paint job. Look how amazing it turned out, it's amazing! I love this transformation. I love seeing transformations like this. It's very rewarding and feels so good to be able to do it yourself. Check it out. I love it. Okay, and one thing I did notice here. You can see on the edge of this door that there is some peeling paint. It stands out like a sore thumb because it's white underneath.

So let's fix this and we'll start by cleaning up the chipped paint with alcohol So that our paint can adhere properly to the surface and then apply the touch up paint and I like to work from the bottom up. So we lifted the paint against gravity. If you start from the top down, you'll end up with smeared paint, and that doesn't look good. Don't set your standards too high when doing this either, the damaged area won't go away. But the idea is that this will look much better than if we left it. So a little tweak like that makes everything better. difference.

Is not perfect. But I want to say that this body is not perfect. Look, there are little chips here and there and that's what I mean, it's a $500 car, it is what it is. But this is a million times better than it was before, remember. There's that stain over here. It's like a multicolored stain. All that is over. And this paint job shines like crazy. It looks amazing. Look at the reflection. Is incredible. Now. This side was pretty simple to do, the paint job was faded, but it was horrible and turned out amazing. But the other side is where we're going to have a hard time because not only is the paint really bad like here, but we also have well, almost non-existent paint, you can see it's all chipped and we're left with primer.

So what we're going to do here is paint this and not only are we going to paint this right here, we're also going to paint this. door trim I picked up from the junkyard of a red pioneer Unfortunately, I couldn't find a black one. Our car only came with the rear door trim. The front door trim was missing and it doesn't look as good. It's not a necessity, but since we're painting things anyway, we might as well removethis. So let's paint. That and we are going to paint up there very easily. Let me show you what you need.

Here's everything you'll need. We will use sandpaper. We'll sand things smooth and then we'll clean them and then we'll spray paint them. I'll show you. the whole process. So, let's get started. So the first thing we need to do is figure out where exactly we are going to spray paint. Obviously we know we're going to paint here because we want to fix this, but we don't want to just have a Hard Paint Line here and a Hard Paint Line right there. You will see a big difference between the old paint and the new paint. Even after compounding and polishing this, this paint is still a little more faded than the fresh paint.

So what we want to do is work with the lines of the body. We want to find a place like down here where it becomes tight where We can use this panel space here and mask this. We can use this narrow spot here and then mix old paint with new paint. So you can't really see a transition and if you do, it's at a really small point. So it's not completely obvious the same thing that appears here, obviously, painting all of this and then it appears right here. Perfect. We'll use this space on the panel here.

We're going to mask it out and use this hard body line here because you won't be able to see much of a difference between this. And this with a hard body line, you can I don't see that paint line So we're using the contours of the car to determine exactly where we're going to paint So we're going to paint this entire top section from here to here So we're going to mask this off and me like I used garbage bags, which I cut to cover the rest of the car. So just tape the bags and close the door and make sure you can tape anything.

You don't want to be painted. Take your time with this, make sure the tape lines are straight and even, and remember that everything exposed will be painted. So right here, if we were to just put a piece of tape across, we would create a hard tape line there. There would be an obvious line and it just wouldn't look right. So what we do is we take a piece of paper, something you could fold in half and create a rounded line of tape. So let's leave this here like this. And what that will do is the spray paint will go over it and create a softer transition that will blend out.

Later, so let's tape the paper tightly and the last thing we need to do is cover the mirror like this. Here are some tips to make it really easy to tape everything down and make sure you don't overspray so the only thing that's visible is the part that we're actually going to paint, everything else is covered because if you don't, it will will overspray, speaking of overspray, I moved all the cars down the driveway, the wind is blowing that way, so we'll do it. Now we don't have to worry about getting paint on our cars. Let's start sanding this so we can paint so let's start with one hundred and eighty grit sandpaper and grab a kitchen sponge and the trick here is that the sponge has enough play so that it doesn't create a hot spot when it's sanded So wrap it up sponge it that way and the idea is that you can't put too much pressure on one place.

The sponge will distribute that load evenly across the body panel and this makes it easier to ship and get smoother results. Do you want to sand? I go over the entire rough surface until it is completely smooth and I don't feel any bumps on the body panel. So we are ready. We could clean this up with a little alcohol and move on to the finer 320 grit sandpaper, which is We'll remove the 180 grit scratches and make it even smoother, then we'll wipe with another cloth with alcohol and finish with 400 grit, which is the thinnest we want before painting.

This will give the body panel the smoothness we need, but we also have the 400 grit scratches. To allow the paint to adhere to the body panel, we can now give the body panel a final wipe with alcohol. And make sure to clean the entire panel that we're painting and now we're. ready to paint starting with primer Primers are used because they adhere very well to the freshly sanded surface and are designed to dry to a smooth surface. So that your color layer can look good, just make sure you don't spray it too thick, but at the same time, make sure you have complete coverage and after letting it dry for a few minutes, now we can spray over the color layer again, use layers overlapping and not too thick or it will smear after the first coat.

Let it dry for a few minutes and then spray another coat covering any areas you may have missed, then let it dry for a few minutes and hit it with a final coat for a total of three coats after letting it dry for a few more minutes. The last step is to add a clear coat and when choosing your clear coat, make sure it is the same type of paint as your color coat. And just like before, spray light overlapping coats and let it dry for a couple of minutes and for the last coat I like to slow my hand down and put on a little thicker coat.

Finishing off with a thicker coat is going to have less skin. of orange when it dries But be careful because you don't want to leave it too thick because then it could run and that wouldn't look good. And with that last layer of clear, look at this, it looks very good. So we're going to go and let this dry and while we're letting it dry, we're going to paint the edge of the door. Now we don't want to get paint on this, so you can tape it or instead, take it off and to remove it take some braided fishing line, and I'm using 50 pound test.

And what we need to do is push this thread under the emblem and then move the fishing line back and forth in a sawing motion and this is I'm going to cut the glue from under the emblem. This is a cool little trick to remove emblems without damaging anything. And then once you get to the end, the emblem is free and you can remove it and that's it. Let's send down the edge of the door with 400 grit sandpaper to smooth the surface and give the paint something to bite into, then wipe it down with a little alcohol to clean the surface and we're ready to paint so we'll start by applying a little of primer so that it covers the piece completely, then we can apply three coats of our black coat and finally spray it with an automotive clear coat to get that nice shiny shine.

I think you guys will see how it works. That's all there is to do now. We just have to let it dry. Alright, we let this paint dry for 24 hours and the outer layer of the paint is hard and the dust doesn't stick. So now is the time we want to remove all of this stuff and peel off the tape. Always peel off at an acute angle away from the part you painted. This creates a nice, clean line of paint and the great thing about using whole garbage bags is that cleanup is quick and easy. Now we have one last piece of tape to peel off.

Beautiful. Well. So with everything out of the way, remember, this is 24 hours later. We want to do something that you probably won't expect and that is sand our freshly painted surface with 5000 grit sandpaper. And the reason we're going to do this is because no matter how good you are at spray painting, you're always going to get a little bit of peel. of Orange. It won't lay perfectly flat and you'll always get a little bit of orange peel. of a haze So we want to eliminate that haze. So to start we're going to hit it with 5000 grit.

So take soapy water and spray the sandpaper as well as the surface you're going to ship, then hold the sandpaper flat against the surface and use medium pressure to smooth that orange Peel You can even start with a thousand grits and go up to five thousand, but this paint turned out so well that we're going to start with five thousand and another important point that we want to focus on is right here where we have our new paint and our old paint, we want to make sure to mix this in, so take your sandpaper and send the new paint and layer it over the old paint and this will help you blend it so you can't tell the new versus the old. clean it and see how it looks and that's it.

Now. You can't even see a transition between the old paint and the new paint. That looks amazing. And you can see this has a nice uniform haze and now the next thing we need to do is start from the front and work our way to the back and just compound and polish the car and just to remind you that we're doing all of this. by hand so you can get exactly the same results at home without special tools. So, as before, start mixing the paint and buff it well with medium pressure on the pad. This paint is pretty bad on this side.

So it will take a little more time. So don't be afraid to recompose the painting. Now we can move on to polishing the same as before, use medium pressure and polish the polish into the paint, then polish it and finally get a coat. of wax here to protect the fresh surface, wax and remove the wax and that's it. Look at this. Look at this shine, it's amazing compared to that old rusty paint, so you know how to do it, you get the idea. I'll just show you a before and after on each panel as I go so you don't have to.

See the entire process and then I'll cover what to do in this piece here that we painted. So notice the difference in the front passenger door, rear passenger door, and rear panel. Would you look at this car? This is incredible. Look at the difference in this glow Santo smokes. Wow, talk about a transformation. This thing looks soaked. Okay, so we've polished and waxed everything on the bottom and top, except for the part we painted. We don't want to do anything with that so far, so let me show you what we're going to do with the first compound. the new paint just like we did with all the other parts of the car and then polish the paint the same way we did before and we'll stop right there.

We don't want to put wax or sealant or Ceramic Coating on this yet because the paint is still curing, it's still breathing and we want to fully cure. You should wait about thirty days before putting a layer of wax or something like that on top. So just leave it composed, then polish it and voila, check this out. Look at this. Can you even see the difference between the two paintings? You can't even see where the transition is between the new paint and the old. The new and the old paint. It looks identical. This looks so good.

And the same thing here you can't even see that paint line because it's hidden in the body line. So that's perfect. And this truck is turning out amazing now. There are some other quick things. We have the discolored plastic We have the wheels and we have the headlights that we need to fix So let's start with this discolored plastic and put it back to black. Now the trick to restoring it and keeping it looking good for years to come is To use a ceramic coating like this, I've been playing around with ceramic coating and usually people put this in the paint, but I've found that it works really well on plastics and the trick is to prepare the surface.

So take some soapy water. and a plastic brush like this Spray the entire surface with soapy water and use a brush to clean the plastic. You only want to use a brush like this if the plastic surface is textured, if it's smooth just wipe it with a microfiber towel, but on a textured surface like this the brush will get into all those little crevices and make a big difference in how do you clean it, then hose off all the dirt. You just brush and finally let it dry completely. Now, anytime, before your ceramic coat. you want to make sure you rub the entire surface with alcohol and that prepares the surface.

Now these ceramic coating kits come with everything you need. So let's get all that out of here. And all you need to do is grab the foam applicator, grab the microfiber towel that they give you, and then take the ceramic coating and put a couple drops right on the foam applicator. So just put a bunch in there normally with paint you wouldn't put that much in but with plastic this will absorb a lot of it look at this and it's crazy how much this plastic absorbs the ceramic coating and also look how good it is. is coming out This is very simple, all you need to do is make sure you don't miss any points and you guys know I like before and after comparisons.

Look at that difference, this looks amazing and the best part is with the ceramic coating. It's going to be this deep and dark for a long time and you can't tell me it doesn't look a lot better. It's no longer faded and looks great, especially now with our freshly polished car. It's not the only place you could use ceramic coating. Another good use is on the bottom of door handles where it gets scratched. Just polish some ceramic coating here and see the difference. The scratches are harder to see, the plastic is darker and looks much better.

Here it is scratched. And here is the ceramic coating. Now you can use ceramic coating in tons of differentplastics in your car, like this rearview mirror. And again, this will stay bright. It will remain dark and with this intense color for a long time. And I think you understand the idea of ​​ceramic coating, which is normally intended for painting. Works. Stunning in plastic. Believe me. You're going to love it. Alright, now that we have all the plastics taken care of, let me show you how to clean those wheels, first take your favorite wheel cleaner and spray the wheels.

Then use a soft bristle brush to agitate the cleaner and remove all the brake dust and dirt on the wheel and tire. One tip is to make sure not to let the wheel cleaner dry on the wheels. If it dries, it will stain them badly. So brush the entire wheel and then spray it with the hose and watch all the dirt come off the wheel. Now, while this looks pretty good, I could see some debris that wasn't removed. the wheel So let me show you how to remove this, look at all that discoloration and debris in there.

Even if we take a microfiber towel and try to clean it. It's just that most of the wheels are now painted in that paint, so the bracket is embedded in that paint, so use the exact same compound as before. Place some on a microfiber towel and buff it well, continuing to buff until the stain is removed. And check. He eliminated all that. The stain is no longer there. The light abrasive on that compound removed it and your wheels look like new now. Let me be clear. This rightHere is not a stain that is damaged, clear coat.

You can't take it away, you can't fix it. Well, you can. I have another video about it. But you can't just use the compound here and it's gone. You actually have to do it. Sand this and repaint, so for things like this, you can't fix it. But for the support you saw there, you can aggravate it. Now the last thing I like to do to highlight these wheels is use a low shine. tire shine So I spray it on the tire and this is actually an all in one tire cleaner and shine so it can get to the wheels without causing any problems and then I like to wipe it off which gives it the perfect amount of shine and There is no chance of the tire sinking and that's not bad, right?

I love that low shine shine. It looks great, the tires look new compared to a high gloss shine and it helps with our high gloss paint we just did because the wheel doesn't shine the paint. So now we have two things left. one, I'll show you how to restore the headlights and then put a protective coating on them and two, we'll put the door trim back on the door and then we'll be done. So let's finish and let me show you. how to restore these headlights now to restore headlights There are many different methods. You could go out and buy one of these headlight restoration kits.

Alright. They work, but what I like to try to do is keep you from spending a ton of money. So we're going to use the same compound polish and our 5000 grit sandpaper that we've been using all day. So drink your soapy water. spray the headlights and then sand the lens to remove any oxidation and just make sure as you sand you don't hit the paint here with the sandpaper. Otherwise you will have to polish this as well. You could record this if you want. I'm not too worried, I'm just going to be careful, so sand the lens until it's evenly cloudy and then we can move on to the compounding step, just like compounding the paint polished the headlight lens, but we actually used a little more pressure than usual.

Get it into the lens and finally polish some polish again. Buff with some decent pressure to remove those scratches from the plastic and look at that. That looks really good right now, if you want you can leave it, but this haze will come back in a couple of months because the sun is beating down on it and there is nothing to protect it. But if you want the latest, at least a year and you don't want to polish it every two months. I've been playing with a ceramic coating on the headlights and have had amazing results, so clean the lens with alcohol and then apply a few drops of ceramic.

Coating on your towel and apply the coating to the lens making sure to overlap it and wipe it in different directions. So don't miss any place now, check out this amazing transformation and it's amazing how clear headlights make any car look so much better. Alright, we have one more thing we need to do and that is install that painted door trim on the side of the car. So how are we going to put it together. This is in the back. We're going to use a plastic emblem and trim adhesive. This will surround the outside of this plastic trim.

And then all we have to do is tape it down and let it sit for 30 minutes. So let's put this on a soft surface So we don't damage the fresh paint and we want to clean the back here with alcohol, where the stickers are going to go now. Let's add the adhesive and put a thin drop. We don't want to add too much, just a little bit around. Around the entire perimeter, the adhesive should spread when pressed against the door and should look like this. Now we want to clean the surface we are gluing it to with, you guessed it, alcohol and make sure the edge looks good. level I'm using some tape to help guide me.

We also need a couple of pieces of tape ready. That way we can keep the molding in place after pressing it now. You want to very carefully align this molding because we have one shot at this and once it's aligned, press it in there. So everything. the glue finally makes contact with the door let's tape the molding in place so it doesn't fall off and this should sit for 30 minutes to cure and while we wait we can also glue the emblem on which is much easier because it's small and you can't put it crooked, just make sure you press it all the way down so the glue makes contact.

Alright, 30 minutes later, and this is dry. We could remove the tape. Now speaking of tape, you can see the ends here. I taped even more because the ends were starting to come apart a little and I wanted to make sure they were flush. but now we can remove the tape and do this carefully, don't start tearing it off. Remember that you have freshly painted services and also freshly glued surfaces and with that we are done. Look at the shine on this car. What a difference and let me remind you. This was a neglected car that didn't run and cost 500 dollars and now not only does it run but it looks amazing and the best part is that you can do this yourselves at home.

I didn't use any fancy tools or expensive products and I did all the work by hand. That way you know you could get the exact same results and talking about results. Check this out Check out this paint correction. This is incredible, from restoring the faded plastic to touching up the paint here above the door and all this paint correction, the wheels and the headlights. I hope you learned a lot from this video and, if you remembered, give it a thumbs up. Also, if you're not subscribed, consider hitting the subscribe button to see more videos like this, and as always, the tools and products I used in this video are linked in the description so you can easily find them and get the same results.

Auto Tempest website. I used to find this five hundred dollar car. So you guys could find your own five hundred dollar car.