Is the Modern Clear Coat Paint Really Better than the old stuff? PART 1

We recently worked on an older Mercedes SL for a Portland businessman who was looking to sell it.  It was an 86 380 SL that had been pretty neglected and reminded me of all the old stories one hears in automotive lore about the proverbial "barn find".  (You know, where the story teller claims the old farm lady widow was finally selling her sons FIAT that had been in the barn since he went off to war and it turns out to be a 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa!!!)

The Mercedes had cobwebs all over it and looked to have been sitting in the same place for years.  When we got there it was hooked up to a battery charger (the battery is in the trunk on the old SL's!) and we were sure it wouldn't start.  It was covered in dirt and in some cases mud and at least one entire body panel was completely flat as if all the clear coat was gone.)  I almost stopped and called the owner right there and offered to leave without charging him anything.  It was that daunting.  The interior wasn't in great shape either but I want to focus on the exterior in this post.

We cleaned the car to get an idea of what we were dealing with.  The paint really looked dull and awful in many places.  I didn't think there was much I could do to the panels that were completely flat, but I gave it a shot.  Using a simple retail scratch remover/compound, I sprayed the rear trunk panel down with water and started buffing with a 3M waffle pad.  I could not believe it but the dang thing looked amazing within 30 seconds of buffing.  When I looked at my pad it was covered in blue paint.

This was not a modern clear coat paint.  This was a hand-painted enamel paint and a very, very good one.  We buffed that whole car and it looked like a different machine when it was done.  I have to say it was one of the best paints I have ever seen from the factory.  It was far easier to an amazing result with this old enamel paint than it is with modern clear coats.  So why did factories go from this two stage method to the current three stage method?  A lot of reasons boil down to environmental regulations and enforcement.  The old paints used lead in their makeup which became a big no-no for the environmental groups and ultimately the old lead based enamels and laquer paints were phased out.  There are some other reasons which we will cover in part 2 of this post.  Check out all of our recent work at http://www.blmmobiledetail.com

The 1986 Mercedes SL with after market O.Z. Rims

Memories of a Beautiful Showroom

Some 32 years ago, I was a 14 year old kid in love with cars.  Of all the cars I loved, none inspired and fascinated me more than Ferrari's.  I was lucky.  My father owned a small convenience store on 122nd east of Portland Oregon and I was literally just a 10 minute bike ride from the United State's first official Ferrari Dealer, Ron Tonkin.  I wondered what kids in small towns in Montana who loved Ferrari's did.  For me, I simply rode my bike down to his Gran Turismo showroom, parked the bike and quietly and respectfully gazed through the windows and meandered through the small Ferrari infested parking that surrounded it.

This became my Saturday routine.  After doing this three times, I remember that Mr. Tonkin himself once came up to the large windows of the showroom, rapped on them to get my attention, and summoned me to come inside (I had never had the courage to enter the showroom myself).  I was blown away.  This guy was a local automotive legend, he was on TV all the time and was worth likely more than $500 million even then.  He greeted me and even took time to give me a tour of the showroom.  He was kind, genteel and genuinely appreciated my fascination of these fine cars.  To this day, I remember every car that was in that showroom: a metallic blue Ferrari 512 BBi, a white and black Ferrari 308 GTSi, another 308 in yellow, a red 400i coupe and a red Alfa Spider Veloce and a deep metallic charcoal gray Alfa GTV6 2.5.

For a 14 year old car nut, Ron Tonkin's Gran Turismo was an oasis.

But that was then, and this is now.
As the city of Portland expanded it's locus of control to include 122nd which was unincorporated area back then, and then added the MAX light rail system, the quaint middle-class region that surrounded the Gran Turismo was slowly converted into a ghetto.  Now it is a crime-ridden dump where drug deals take place on every corner and most people I know don't even want to visit it.  My families' store has been owned by other people for years and it's a dump too. You can also thank the fine people of the Portland Development Commission (PDC) who spent untold millions of taxpayer dollars to move Portland's ghetto from North Portland (remember what Alberta used to be like) to East Portland.  Now they want to renovate East Portland (which begs the question; where will the ghetto go this time?)

I hung out at the Gran Turismo a lot when I was a teenager.  It was a great place to be.  In high school I wrote an article called "Memories of a Beautiful Lady" about my first experience in a Ferrari Boxer down at the showroom, it won a couple of writing awards as I recall.  Mr. Tonkin isn't responsible for what happened to the region around 122nd; neither am I.  The city of Portland (and the short-sighted PDC) should be ashamed of itself for letting a nice area turn into a cesspool of crime and drugs. 

I guess all we can do is remember what it used to be like.  I'm sure Mr. Tonkin does.  The last I heard he lived full time down in Arizona.  I'm not sure if he ever gets up to this cold climate to see the showroom anymore.  I'm sure he remembers the beauty and distinction of his award winning building, though.  I'm sure he remembers the excitement he and others must have felt as legendary car after legendary car were unloaded in front of the showroom to the amazement of people like me (and anger of people trying to drive on 122nd).  I'm sure he has lots of memories of that magical place.

I doubt he remembers me though.  I imagine I wasn't the only 14 year old car nut that stared through the windows of the Gran Turismo.

But I remember him. 

Restoring Leather: Part 2

In my first post I discussed the most basic concepts of restoring leather.  I'm going to go a bit more in-depth on this post and discuss a lot of stuff about how the automotive industry deals with leather and what can be done to restore and preserve the leather you have.

First, although leather is more prevalent now than it has been in the past (even Kia's and Hyundai's offer it as an option), the leather used now is a little different than what my father had on his old 70's Cadillacs.  To begin with, it's much thinner than leather used then and it is dyed differently.  One of my recent clients thought that "spray" dyeing was a cheaper method than pure-through dyeing and he was right, but he shouldn't feel bad.  Likely 90-95% of all car leathers are spray-dyed.  Only a tiny percentage of cars (Bentley, Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Aston Martin) will use leather that has been vat dyed (the color is imbedded in the leather versus sprayed over the top).

Is the leather in the Bentley and Rolls better than the leather in your car simply because it was dyed differently?  No.  It is better leather though, mainly because the cows it comes from are carried around on pillows, never scrape their skin and eat better than you or I do.  The leather from these pampered cows is flawless.  Dyeing this leather in a vat doesn't make it better, but it does  help to eliminate one issue most other automotive leathers have:  Cracking.

Cracking occurs when the flexible color dye that is sprayed onto your leather begins to wear and develops cracks.  Since the leather underneath is usually just a pale cream (natural leather) it can really be noticeable especially on cars with darker interiors.  You can opt to replace the leather.  I was going to do this with my Mercedes ML which actually has German Vinyl rather than leather.  I was quoted from $3,000 to $5,000 to do this.  Or, you can strip the original dye off and replace it.  Take a look at the pictures below.  The first set is from my Mercedes ML:

Vinyl is dirty, cracked and worn

Vinyl is re-dyed, as new

This second set of pictures is from a recent client who had a Hyundai SUV with a full leather interior:

Seat is heavily worn and stained

Seat is re-dyed to original specs

The repairs to these interiors cost literally 1/6 of what it would cost to actually replace the leather and the turn-around time is significantly less.  If your leather is seriously damaged and ripped or if your seats cushions have been seriously compromised then replacing the leather makes sense.  However, if the leather itself is in good shape and only the topical coating is damaged, the re-dyeing method is far more cost effective.

How much will it cost?  It depends on the vehicle but the Hyundai above was finished in one day for under $250.  (That's both front seats!)

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