Hi guys,

I recently bought a 1990 Ranger and the paint was not taken care of. There are white marks all over it (some of you might have seen the pictures I posted) from the ruined clearcoat and I know that I need a new paint job but my question is this: If I wax it is it just going to make the truck look worse or should I still wax it anyways? I am a college student that saved up all summer just to afford the truck so that I can get to school everyday so a paintjob is probably a couple years away. I just want to know if I should or should not clay bar and wax it. Thanks!

 

I would try doing a small section first and see how it looks. The guy I detailed with showed me a trick if you have access to a buffer. Some of the lease cars would come in with next to nothing for a clear coat....red cars turn pink....you get the idea. He would buff them with Pledge furniture ploish. It didnt give very much protection from the sun and elements...but thats what the clear coat was for...and it wasnt there. If you have access to a good buffer, you could try that too. Sounds crazy, but it worked lol.

Waxing a truck with no clear might just be more trouble then its worth, you'll prolly never get the wax off.

 

get some meguiar's cleaner wax. i used to have a 91 honda and back then is when factories still used a lead based paint. it'll protect the paint even without a clear coat. just without that clear coat it'll probably go away quicker.

 

back then, Honda didnt use clearcoat finishes i believe. in fact, many import vehicles are still shot with single stage paints. Toyota and Honda still use em i think on cars that were built out of the US. (although i did a 4Runner once that was single stage... original paint.. and thats built in the US i think) a Honda S2000 i did was single stage red from the factory. weird to polish a new car and get red paint all over the buffing pad.

As far as the Ranger, yeah, if you try to polish or wax the exposed basecoat will likely just lead to stains.

 

opivyattack -
Does the hood/top look like this?




and I am guessing you are wanting to get it to look something like:





It is alot of work, but one of our customers did it (as you can seein the pictures.)! So it is possible, you must be very careful though, not to go though the paint to the the primer or metel. Let me know if you are interested in the products that he used to get that result. He was able to accomplish all that with our Poorboys products.

 

Whoa my Mom's CR-V looks just like that... I'm interested in how he got that result...

 

Here is what he used -
Clayed the car - Only product I do not currently sell - took 3 times to get all the crap off the car
Poorboys SSR2.5 (wanted to use ssr3 but paint was too thin) once
PB SSR2 - once
PB SSR1 - once

This was the difference after these steps:


This is a a 50:50 shot of the diffence the SSR's made!



Then EX-P - He did 2 applications

He never put a "WAX" on it, as it did not have a clear coat. But if you have a clear coat, you could wax it at this point. He normaly uses Natty's Paste wax BLUE < as it can be used on light and dark color cars, but really makes a dark color POP.

Let me know if you have any questions. I will do my best to help you. I will put a package deal together for you if you want to get the complete kit that he used.

 

^^

Wow, thats a huge difference! About how much would all that run? I'll talk to my Dad. Also, since the car has no clear coat, won't the color fade?

 

Not if you keep it waxed. I would just wet-sand the rest of the clearcoat off, then buff it back to shine. You can do that with an orbitla if you have the right finishing material. I use 3m Finesse-it all the time at work, never fails to amaze me how well it works and how broad the range of applications can be. I use it as a scratch remover, wetsand finisher, first stage compound, even used it as a swirl remover once.

 

EXP is $14.95 < Currently onsale
SSR1 - $11.95 < Currently onsale
SSR2 - $11.95 < Currently Onsale
SSR2.5 - $11.95 < Currently onsale

I guess everything you are looking at is onsale :) What is your zip code? I will let you know about shipping.