William Ford
Hey guys welcome back to ceramicwizards and welcome to another alpena b7 article to get you guys up to speed. We paid 15 000 for this clean title 2011, alpena b7 with a hundred and two thousand miles on it, but it was vandalized and repossessed by the bank. So someone smashed out the back glass and keyed almost every panel, and it was eventually sold at a dealer. Auction now, when i received the car, it was misfiring and barely ran and it had a record for legit street cars of 243 trouble codes. But by the end of that article i whittled it down to 18 codes and fixed its rough running issue.
And then i had to complete a very specific alpena test, drive procedure to verify that this engine still had 500 horsepower, all right so before we get to the scratches. I just want to remove this front. Alpena lip and it’s just held on by some screws on the bottom that i already removed and some double-sided tape and this thing got pretty, beat up like a lot of front. Lower lips do and since we’re going to be fixing the scratches and buffing the car out and ceramic coating, the entire car, i want to complete the package and outside of the scratches. This is really the only damage to the paint that’s done well, and the mirror caps have some clear, coat peeling, but we’re gon na fix that also all right there we go forgot one of the screws.
All right, she’s off, can only imagine what this costs from alpena, but no cracks just all scuffed up, so we’re in pretty good shape. Now it’s just an old peasant 750 li ew, all right, so i’m taking the mirror cap off and i already kind of broke free, the front of it, and now this should technically just pull right up there. We go okay, cool, so we’re gon na take care of this clear coat peel after we fix the scratches, but first i got ta. Let you guys know of a crazy flash sale that just got approved. I asked my friends at avalon king to do something special for you guys to kick off spring and they did, but it’s limited quantity, so only the first 500 of you are gon na get this deal all right.
So here’s the deal, if you guys click on my link down below and buy the very complete armor shield: 9 diy ceramic coating, kit and type in code legit 2022. The first 500 of you are also going to get a free six pack of all-purpose microfibers, a free 16 ounces of car shampoo. This makes amazing foam and cleans very well and you’re also going to get a free microfiber wash mitt. So this is a 40 value and you’re not going to find this deal anywhere else. This is a special flash sale just for my viewers, if you have a small to medium sized car, one kit is enough to coat every exterior surface, but if you have a large car truck or suv get two kits, you get double the free stuff, too.
The application is super easy after you’ve cleaned your car just apply the ceramic coating to the supplied applicator pad, wipe it on wait, 60 seconds and wipe it off. I can usually coat an entire car in about an hour and a half, and that includes coating. The glass the wheels so they repel brake dust and trim and if your trim is faded, this is going to restore it instantly. Don’T bother buying a separate trim restoring product, since the coating makes everything super hydrophobic, dirt and water just bead right off and if you’re married show your wife. This part of the article wipe some on your glass shower door, let it dry overnight and because nothing sticks to a coated surface, the water and soap, scum, bead right off keeping the door cleaner for longer.
I use this stuff on everything i want to protect, including outdoor chairs, bicycles and much more. If you guys have been thinking about coating, your car or anything, definitely act quick as this deal isn’t gon na last very long link and coupon code. Legit 2022 are down below in the description box with that, let’s go fix, some scratches all right. So before you fix any scratches on your car, you need to assess the damage. Some scratches can be buffed out like this right here is more of a scuff other scratches, have just scratched the clear coat and an easy trick you can use to tell if that’s the case is to spray water or an adhesive remover on the scratch, and if It looks like this after, where the scratch almost disappears.
The scratch probably only penetrated the clear coat, but this is a scratch that did penetrate the clear coat you can see the primer in this one. It’S a different color, it’s a gray or black, and in this case we will have to add color. So i took the alpena to a few local body shops and the quote to fix this car was seven thousand dollars because they were quoting me on an entire new paint job, but we’re gon na try and fix this car up for under 100 and in a Very diy fashion, so any one of you guys can do this at home all right. So here is today’s arsenal of tools and i’ll show you more on each one of these as we work all right here we go scratch repair. So i’m going to work in small sections, so i’m going to take this chunk of the quarter panel, where someone expressed their hatred for this person quite a bit and we’re going to use the same method for all the scratches for the most part.
So, first we’re going to hit it with some very coarse compound and we’re going to go ahead and just put a little bit of that on a coarse pad and we’re going to do this pretty slow. You don’t want to zip it back and forth too quickly, not a lot of pressure. Let the machine do the work and i want to see what scratches will come out with just thisall right. Let’S wipe this off see we got awesome. So we have fully removed one of the scuffs and we can tell this paint is going to shine up very nicely after we’re done buffing out the whole car so buffing.
This first did a couple of things. First off we got that scuff completely out, so this is what it looked like before and now it’s gone 100 gone now. Something else that buffing it first will do is expose any deeper scratches. So at first glance it may just look like it’s in the clear coat, but you can see in this case you can see the black line, so we will have to add color here it has gone past the clear coat – and this is unfortunate – it’s definitely easier To fix a scratch like this, that’s in the clear coat, but you got to do what you got to do so after you’ve buffed the area and it’s exposed all the true damage. In some cases you can wet sand the area and remove a lot of the scratches, so i’ll probably be wet sanding a lot of these scratches before we apply anything to them.
So i’m using 2 000 grit sandpaper and a little sponge that i found laying around keep everything nice and lubricated, and we’re going to go ahead and wet sand and see if we can cut these scratches down even more basically the name of the game here is We want to use as little product as possible and you guys are going to see what i’ll be using here in a moment. Teaser. It’S paint and clear, but applied in a very specific fashion, to reduce the visual damage that someone did to you, that horrible horrible human being i keyed your car what’s wrong with that person all right, so just a few minutes of wet sanding, sometimes when you’re wet Sanding, you forget to hit a spot because the water makes everything kind of disappear. So i forgot we had a scratch going down. Let’S see it’s possible, we cut that scratch down quite a bit right there.
Oh, this is great, so we’re probably going to fix a couple of these scratches completely by wet sanding. Now some people say you can go with a coarser sandpaper, but i rather put a little bit more time into it with a finer sandpaper. It’S going to make our buff job later much easier before we buff it again, it’s kind of hard to tell exactly which scratches we’ve removed, because we kind of scuffed the entire area, but i think we fixed some of that one and probably the beginning of this Scratch here a little compound there and we’ll get the scuff mark off and see what lies beneath all right. So after the buff job and before we get to applying anything, i’m going to use some pre-painting prep. This is just going to get rid of any waxes grease or the compound that we literally just rubbed right into the scratch, as the compound is going to sit inside of the scratch – and you don’t want to coat over that.
So i like to clean this very well: prep is key all right, so buying paint like this only applies to very few people. I couldn’t get a little bottle of touch up from the bmw dealership for a few dollars, because this is a special alpena color and they don’t make it so i had to get this mixed at a paint shop. I got four ounces of this beautiful metallic blue paint and this cost me 23 So not the end of the world and we’ll have touch-up paint basically for the rest of our lives, we’re going to use, maybe like one percent of this, probably not even for application. I bought these little dabbers, which i’ll leave everything linked down below that you see in this article, but these are key, so we’re not using too much product. That is the name of the game, and these come with this little fluffy thing at the end, and i like to cut it down with a razor blade.
So there’s very little of that left and then we’re just going to use some clear coat and you can get this at any local. Auto parts store and it does come with a brush on here, but it’s kind of aggressive, it’s kind of big. We don’t need that much material, so we’ll just dab this guy in there. Let’S get a little bit a little goes a long way, and i like to start at the top and we’re just going to gently fill in our scratch and with these clear coat scratches. Basically, you can imagine that that white, clear is just the powder from scratching the clear coat and when you wet it, it kind of disappears.
What you’re doing with this is you’re permanently wetting it. At the same time, you are filling in this tiny little scratch, and this is a ton of fun because a lot of times these clear coat ones will just disappear right in front of your eyes and you don’t have to add any color whatsoever. All right now keep in mind. I have some crazy lights on this right now, but you can see a lot of the scratch has gone away. You can still see some of it and we’re not completely done.
We have to wait for the clear coat to dry, but while that one’s drying, let’s go ahead and hit this one, i’m just barely touching it with that fuzzy tip, so we still have to sand and buff. But this is looking a lot better. Good comparison would be this guy right here. These scratches were just about the same, and if we zoom out, we have that compared to this, so you’d really have to be looking at this, especially from far away. I mean look as we go further and further away.
It kind of disappears, and again this is what we’re working with with lighting in here, but anyway, let me show you now how to add color, because when we buff this area outside of it removing some of those initial scuffs, it also exposes any of the scratches That are a little bit deeper. You can see this one has the black in there, so this has gone through the clear coat and actually scratched the paint, and in some cases you get down to the primer as well or into the metal. If it’s really bad. So we just want to add a little bit of color in this area. All right actually we’ll just hit this one clear coat scratch just because it’ll take you know 30 seconds or so do that and then we’ll add color to the other one and we will be sanding this down.
So if you have high spots, where you put too much material, don’t worry about it too much. Those high spots will cause an edge and you can actually see that, especially if you’re looking at it on the side – and here you go so you can still see where our clear coat is on there. But we’re going to be removing that all right. The next part is adding some color into the deeper scratches now, admittedly, this isn’t going to look as good as our other repairs or as a seven thousand dollar paint job. We got ta have realistic expectations here.
Okay, we are doing touch up. It’S not gon na be perfect, but the idea here is: you have a car with a hundred thousand miles that you picked up for not a lot of money compared to what it costs new. Do you want to put a 7 000 paint job on that car, or do you want to make it look a lot better for the cost of a tank of gas? These days, i’m going to go with the ladder personally, so here we go again we’re going to be sanding. So a lot of this excess paint is going to be coming off, but we’ve added color there and then i’m going to go ahead and just do the clear on this lighter part, there’s a very light scratch to begin with, and then they started gouging right there.
That’S when they remembered what this person did to them, like i’m, not just gon na give you a buffable scratch and ruin your car there we go that one almost disappears completely and it’s okay. If you accidentally mix the two, a lot of these touch-up cans come with the clear coat and the paint all mixed together. So it’s one step, okay, so this is a really good view at why you don’t want to just go crazy with color on these scratches that are just in the clear coat. What can you see right now, just the part that i added the color to and that’s because, especially with a metallic color, this is kind of pooling together inside of that crack and it’ll look darker so had we filled all of these scratches like a lot of People do with normal touch-up paint that has the color and the clear together. You would have seen that so it’s nice to get yourself that separate bottle of clear and use it in the spots where applicable.
So at this point we’re going to go ahead and let this entire section dry, let’s go hit some more scratches and then we’re going to be coming back to this section and sanding it all and buffing it and then that’ll be the final product. Well and then we got a ceramic coat everything of course, and again this is like worst case scenario with lighting with all these fluorescent lights. Look at what happens when we turn the lights off yeah most of the scratches just disappear again. You can kind of see that and in the natural sunlight, this will look even better next up we’re going to tackle one of the largest scratches on the car, and i believe this is all in the clear all right so for this larger scratch. What i want to do is do a little bit of wet sanding.
The only reason i want to do it for this scratch is, it looks a little deeper here. It still hasn’t hit the base coat though so i just want to see if we can knock down some of this scratched up clear with the sandpaper and i’m using the sponge, so it kind of gets in there better later we’ll be block sanding, which is completely Different – and this is very fine, 2000 is very fine and if you have some really light scratches, sometimes all you need to do is wet sand, just keep it nice and lubricated. Let’S wipe this off see we got and you’re going to see that it’s a little scuffed up, that’ll all come out when we buff, which i’m actually going to do now, because i want to see exactly what we’re working with and this will kind of cover up. Some of the scratch some of the scratch is probably actually gone. Let’S hit it with the buffer, all right.
Let’S see what we really have left wow all right. This is looking great check it out guys. The vast majority of the scratch is gone totally gone, just a little bit of wet sanding and buffing is all it took now. We know what we truly have left for the real scratch and we can minimize making any kind of line in the paint, even with the clear, even after you block it, you can still tell a little bit and uh in this case. We can’t tell at all it’s gone all right, we’ll get some of the free painting prep on there clean it up real nice, i’m gon na go ahead and switch to a tip that we haven’t cut down and since we will be block sanding, i’m not super Concerned about getting excess clear on the edge of the scratch, so we’re going to be removing that.
But i want to make sure that we really fill the scratch in and reduce the amount of white that you see all right. Well, we’re not even done yet, but this is what the scratch looked like before, and here we are, after with these massive lights on behind me, looking pretty good and if we turn the lights off bam, hi, guys all right, we’re almost at the point where the Door scratches are dry and we can sand them so i’ll be moving on to a new step here in a minute, but for now let’s get rid of this scratch on the hood, and for this one it’s a really long scratch. I’M going to go ahead and wet sand. First, all right here we go. Let’S see how much of this we can remove by simply wet sanding all right here we go a light, wet sand, keep it lubricated people, okay, let’s wipe this off, so we’re left with.
So far, it’s tough to see before we buff, but i think we might have gotten that scratch out completely with wet sanding and definitely minimize this i’m cleaning the pad in between panels not putting too much of this on. There spread it out. all right. Let’S see what we truly have and i’ll go ahead and use the paint prep spray too clean out any compound from the scratch, because the compound is white, so it’ll actually make the scratch look worse than what it is. Okay and what sandy didn’t completely save us on this one, we still have quite a bit of this scratch left, but i don’t think it has gone into the base coat.
So we can hit it with the clear all right here we go. I’M going to use the felt at the tip of this. This one is definitely deeper and then this area doesn’t have any scratch whatsoever. I think we did wet sand that down so we’ll go ahead and get this guy. Oh, this one is definitely disappearing on us.
This is fantastic wow. This one has the slightest scratch in it. Oh, the wet sanding definitely helped us here. What do you got? What do you have dude?
You know you’re pretty deep, give you that what brings people to scratching someone’s machine, an alpena b7 in the classic alpena blue 2, i believe, is what they call this, not really sure alpina guys. Let us know in the comments, please i mean look. I wouldn’t do really anything to anyone honestly, but if i really disliked someone, i wouldn’t touch their car no way. But if someone keys your car now you know what you can do to fix it now, if your car does get keyed and insurance pays you off for a paint job, you should totally go to a body shop and spend all of that money on that paint. Job and not pocket any of it at all and fix the car yourself.
You shouldn’t do that all right. So here’s the hood scratch before and here is the hood scratch after much less noticeable. You can pretty much just follow the clear right in there. It gets a little bit darker, but that should be fixed in sanding speaking of sanding. Let’S do some of the areas that are dry now and ready to be cut down all right at this point, we’re going to block sand what used to be a massive scratch on the car.
I had to kind of touch it to see exactly where i even started with the clear coat and it’s right about here, and we did put a few little fine scratches in this area, which are going to come out when we re-buff everything. But right now we need to knock this clear down and i know it’s hard to even tell that it’s built up, but it is, you can kind of see it right there that there’s a high spot in the clear coat – and you can tell my boots – are Super gross from removing literal paint from someone painting the leather seats on this car here i’ll leave that linked down below, but anyway, let’s use a high-tech block, sander all right. So this is a new state of the art tool that was just released by nasa, and i got the first one. It’S uh, it’s called a piece of wood and we’re going to take that piece of wood. It looks very similar to a stir.
Stick that they give you for free at the paint shop and it might have just been cut down, looks kind of like that. But we’re going to take this and we’re going to wrap it in a piece of our 2000 grit. We want this backing to be hard that way when we sand it sands down only the high spots and not all the area around it. So if we go ahead with the sponge again, it’s going to contour to the clear coat and it’s just going to sand this area. Here we want this to be sanded, so we’ll do the same thing: we’ll wet everything, and now we are block sanding.
So it’s kind of teeter-talling, if that’s a word on the high spot, and so most of the pressure is going on that excessive, clear that came outside of the scratch. When i’m block sanding a scratch, i don’t necessarily go the entire length. We can kind of focus in on the scratch itself. I think that helps with buffing later just often kind of a smaller area and guys, if you keep this lubricated and you’re using 2000 you’re, not going to do any real damage to the clear you’d have to sit here for hours. To do that, i know some people use 800 grit, a thousand grit – something like that, but i really recommend the fine stuff we’ll wipe this down, get right into our prep spray, really clean this up wow.
This is so cool that has been reduced down to like a little scuff. So let’s hit it with the buffer again. Was there a scratcher? Was this? Was this keyed?
You could do better than that? Whoever keep this car. Are you kidding me? We just knocked that down to practically nothing unbelievable. This is great all right, so this is what we had before, and this is what we have now.
This is crazy. There is basically no more scratch from most all angles. You won’t be able to see anything at all. Look i mean this was the super deep part. I don’t even know where it went.
Where are you i was gon na say at most angles. You can’t see it, but it’s like at all angles. I think it might be all gone like this is totally gone. There is no scratch left there. Okay, here we go if we zoom in, i mean look at that, we got ta, get it right up close in there.
This is filmed in 4k with, like 30 fluorescent lights, shining at it, let’s go ahead and turn the lights off bam. Look at this! Oh man! This is great and it’s so much fun too and rewarding any one of you guys. Look i’m right here.
It’S a mirror any one of you guys can do this at home seriously less than a hundred bucks in material. I can’t wait to show you this outside. I’M gon na go ahead and knock out this scratch right here next, but i’m gon na. Do it off camera and then i’ll just show you this entire side all right here you go this door, you already saw and this driver door had just about the same size scratch i just want to zoom in as much as possible and show you guys what This really looks like there, you can kind of see a little bit of it and it all just disappears. It’S gone all right.
So with that done. That means this is about dry, so i’m giving it about an hour for the clear to dry before wet sanding, and then we’re just going in real gentle with this shouldn’t. Take us more than about five minutes to wet sand out each scratch. I’M talking the entire hood, that’s all it’ll take and where was that one? We got most of it out.
Okay, it’s kind of hard to see, especially once you put the water in so we’re just doing our blocking right now making sure it’s all level no high spots. So when you’re wet sanding, you want to stop every so often just about every 30 seconds or so and just wipe the area and see if you’re done and you can see here – we just barely have a little bit of clear left here. This one shows a little bit more, so i have a tiny bit more sanding to do right here. You can still see some clear coat so we’ll just spray it down and just do this little section. It should do it yep there we go, so we just got rid of all the excess clear, and this is ready for buffing.
Now i just wanted to show you a super up close spot of where we added the color on the quarter panel. You can kind of see the line if we’re zoomed in like that, but if we zoom out that’s what you’re looking at the color is right in this area, really can’t tell all right guys. So i just got done buffing out the hood and over. There is really nice. I can’t even tell where that scratch is, but i’m not super happy with this area.
You can still see the scratch, so i’m going to try something i’m going to put a little bit of color into this one, and then we are going to block sand this off and i’m trying to add just a tiny bit of color at the very bottom. We’Re not gooping this on and i think then, once we go over it with the clear again it’ll blend a lot better, all right! So that’s what it looks like right now, pretty horrible, but we’re gon na let this dry for about an hour we’ll block sand. It kind of do everything all over again with the clear and see what we have okay, so the color has been curing for about an hour. So now i’m just going to wet sand a little bit and we’re bringing down the high spots of the color.
So i want to get it to the point where i don’t see any of the dark blue on the very top kind of like right here. So it’s just in the crack. That’S all you need. You don’t want any on the top surface, where you’re going to see it see the difference here. Look at that we haven’t wet sanded all the way yet and over here i mean we can’t even tell can’t even tell there we go.
That’S what i want to see: okay, so now we’ll wipe this. That is the ticket right there, just adding a little bit of base coat inside of the deeper cracks. I would still repair the lighter scratches um with just the clear coat, but this is unreal. Let me buff that out, all right. Let’s wipe this off and i think this is our best result yet wow.
So i still have a little bit of buffing to do, but i mean the scratch is gone. We can get up super close to where the scratch was, and i can’t even find it seriously can’t even find it right now. It’S there, i’m telling you it’s there somewhere, it is there somewhere, i’m telling you there. It is see it right at the edge of that light. That’S the scratch right right there right here, can’t even feel it anymore.
It is gone all right. So, even though this is gone, and i honestly can’t even really find it it’s so hard um, i still want to put a little tiny bit of clear on here and then we’ll block sand, and this is really really difficult, because i can barely see where the Scratch was, but we still want to get clear coat on here to protect the paint, even though we’re ceramic coating it which will protect it from uv rays. We still want to do this all right, so this will take like another half hour i’ll, have to block sand this down again and then buff it. But this is really gon na mint out this repair, all right guys. So i’ve been scratching the rear, bumper and a fender which i’m gon na take care of no problem, but this passenger side is definitely the worst of it.
So we’ve saved the worst for last or the best for last, depending on how you’re looking at this. But this scratch right here in particular, they really dug deep. They really hated this alpena owner when they keyed this section of the car, because they went way past the clear and the base coat. But i am not scared. We’Re gon na do the same procedure for this entire passenger side, and i think it’s gon na turn out really nice all right guys.
I’M gon na speed this up a little since you’ve stuck with me this long. This stuff is just too satisfying not to show you, so i’m just going to show you the results after each step, so i’ve already buffed this entire side with the coarse compound in the course pad, and then i have wet sanded just the scratch. So you guys saw what the scratch looked like. Now, you see what it looks like after the wet sanding and now i’m gon na buff it – and this is what it looks like after buffing just the passenger rear door. We don’t really have to do much actual repair work on this one.
We got a lot of this scratch out and this is what it looks like after buffing out both doors. So i know from here it looks totally perfect, but we still have some areas like that, one where we have to add in our base coat, and there are some clear, coat repairs that need to be made as well and keep in mind that we still have To buff the entire car out and then do a second stage with a finer compound and a finer pad and then ceramic coat. Everything and the ceramic coating fills in the pores of the clear coat, so it can reduce little light scratches and whatnot. So this is going to look even better by the end of the article all right. Here’S what it looks like after adding the color and then block sanding it down.
So you can see right here was where we had that big gouge. Now that has a little bit of the base coat and there were a few other little spots that we did the same all right, and here we are – this – is after buffing it out and from here you literally can’t see anything at all, so i still have To add the clear coat and then block that uh and then buff it away but yeah so here is the before, and here is the after on the passenger side all right. So it is day two guys and we are on the buff and polish step. So we spent one day fixing all of the scratches and today i’m buffing out the entire car. So this thing probably sat outside at an auction lot for a couple of years and that’s what it looks like.
According to the information i found on the auction site and whatnot, so the paint was pretty faded, clear coats, looking hazy, there’s lots of scratches so anyway, i just did a two-step and let’s peel this back, this thing is really going to clean up. Well, so take a look at the paint right there and then we’ll move the light over to this area. Look at how clean and clear this is it’s a beautiful color, this alpena blue 2 and we are just going to exfoliate this entire clear coat. This is going to be so satisfying, so let me show you guys what i’m using all right, so some of this you’ve already seen, but in the first alpena article i washed the car and i used a clay mitt during the washing process. Just like a clay bar, this is removing the impurities in the clear coat.
So that’s already done now, i’m going to hit the entire car with the coarse compound and the coarse pad from rupez, and then what you just saw there for demonstration purposes. I just finished out that one little section was the fine compound with the fine pad. So that’s about it, i’m not going to show you the entire process. I’Ll just show you some of the good stuff. The spoiler on the alpena is probably the most faded body.
Part on this car, so, let’s see if we can fix that all right, so we got to be really careful when buffing edges, so we don’t burn through the paint this little spot right here is a little difficult look at the difference, just after one step. Wow all right: let’s get the fine polish on here, guys! Is there anything more satisfying than this wow look at that finish, this car is gon na. Look so good. I love bringing these cars back to life all right.
Let’S get back to work all right. Restoring black trim is always super satisfying. Look at that that shaves years off the look of the car all right guys, i just got done buffing the entire car and we washed it again just to get any of the compound off. So now it’s time for ceramic coating, all right guys! So before we apply the ceramic coating, we want to make sure that all the compound is off of the surface.
So a couple options: here: you can get the avalon king, ipa prep spray, or you can simply mix a little bit of rubbing alcohol with water and spray it on. So right now we’re just removing all that compound any leftover, waxes or greases. If you didn’t buff out your car, because you don’t have to buff out your car before you ceramic coated, if it’s in pretty good shape, you can go ahead, use the clay, mitt and then apply it, but we’re just going to go around and spray this on. There and wipe it off. That’S about it all right!
So at this point, we’re just going to prep our pad with a little bit of the ceramic coating and we’re simply going to wipe it on, and i like to go up and down and side to side to make sure we’re really filling the pores of the Clear coat and this stuff is so easy to work with. You can work on larger sections at the same time, and once your car is clean, you could probably coat the entire thing in about an hour, something like that. It’S really easy! There you go. We did about 20 of the hood in about 10 seconds, we’ll let it dry for 60 seconds and then we’re going to buff it off, but a little trick is while that’s drying.
Let’S just go. Do another section of the hood – and you can see this stuff when you’re applying so you’ll know what you’ve already covered? Okay. So now that section is drying. It’S been about 60 seconds, we’re just going to come right over here and wipe it down.
The ceramic coating brings out a deep glossy finish as well in the paint this is really going to pop, especially once we get outside. So it’s been about another 60 seconds. We can wipe down this area here and in just about i don’t know three or four minutes: we’ve done half the hood. So as you can imagine, this goes pretty quick. All right ceramic coating is done, it’s drying and we got ta get the tire shine on 21-inch michelin pilot super sports.
These are definitely not cheap tires. I just got back from o’hare auto body in bensonville illinois. They did such a good job on the paint and the mirror caps are going right back on nice and easy. I just got done putting our double-sided tape on the lower bumper lip, so this can be installed. That’S all you have to do if you want to make the front of your 750 li.
Look like an alpena. Let’S just stick on the alpena lip, and so after three days this is the final product. Our 2011 alpena b7 is scratch free and it came in way under budget, so i have about eighty dollars in all of the materials used in this project. So a seven thousand dollar quote for a paint, job or eighty dollars for what you see here and any one of you guys can do this at home and it was a total blast. This is one of the most fun cosmetic restoration projects.
I’Ve ever done. So obviously the car is not complete. It’S missing the back glass and some trim parts i have to order, but now that it looks like this and after the first article we got it running perfectly now, i’m just gon na complete the entire project. We’Re going to do all the modules that got wet in the trunk, we’re fixing it all, i’m replacing all the trim, and this thing is going to be a really nice car. So let’s get right into some before and afters.
So this is what the hood looked like before and on a sunny day here in chicago. This is what it looks like after it’s honestly really impossible to even find the scratch seriously uh. It’S i don’t know yeah there you go there. It is, i mean no one would ever find this if you weren’t looking for it. If you didn’t know where it was, you would never see that scratch on the hood, so that looks amazing but yeah.
This is gon na be kind of hard to show. You guys, because i don’t remember exactly where they were, but uh here is the before of the driver door, and here is the after of the driver door so yeah. If we zoom in it’s right here. This is where it is. I don’t know if you guys can even see that, but it’s there it’s not a hundred percent, it’s probably like 90 percent, which i think is pretty good.
So here is the before of the driver, rear door, and here is the after of the driver, rear door, and then the quarter panel here is the before, and here is the after. This one is a little bit more noticeable right in there where we had to add some color, but again you zoom out, and it looks beautiful and the rear bumper had a scratch. Also, so here is the before, and here is the after. This scratch was right right in here somewhere. You can’t really see it, but yeah.
It was right there and here is the before for the passenger side door, and here is the after looks really nice. We had to add a little bit of color right in there. Anyway, you guys get the idea. These are about 90 95 gone, and this color looks so so good, a couple more shots of the alpena and then i’ll see you guys in the next article, oh and the budget that we spent on fixing the scratches. That obviously did not include painting the mirror caps and that front lower lip at o’hare, auto body that cost 250, but as far as fixing scratches if your car was scratched.
That is all i spent and you guys can too, and i cannot stop looking at this car and you’ve seen it here. First guys a fully paint corrected and ceramic coated car being revealed to you with a busted out back glass. So in the next article we’re gon na replace all of the modules we’re gon na say goodbye to all the dash lights on a super budget, we’re going to dye this deck lid, that’s turned purple and replace the glass and a few little odds and ends, and This alpena is on its way to being sold. This isn’t a long-term project for me, and this is owned by my friend sam crack. So after i’m all done with it, it will be for sale.
Of course, i will announce that in the next article to you guys, so i hope you guys join me in the next installment of i haven’t named this project yet, but alpena b7 vandalism, restoration project – i don’t know i’m horrible with names comment down below what should I name this project if you haven’t already give this article a big thumbs up share the article with your friends subscribe for email if you haven’t already and most importantly, have an awesome day i’ll catch all of you in the next article.
