12 Days Of Detailing Sin

It’s not often a car comes through our shop that captures everyone’s attention, sparks a few questions, floods minds with past memories, or inspires people. The Sin, a 1997 Toyota Supra does just that. When you see the Sin it doesn’t have a hard, edgy body like most modern sports cars being produced today. Cars today look as if they were sculpted in a factory with a chisel and hammer and sparks flying in the background. When you look at the Sin, it’s a very soft smooth flowing car that looks natural and peaceful. The sin looks as if it were formed with soft gentle loving hands in a field full of flowers on a breezy spring day. The flowing curves, wide body, and black paint is a spectacular sight.

Looking underneath the hood of The Sin is a completely different story. Its not your docile 3.0-liter twin turbo inline 6 cylinder Toyota motor producing 320 hp. Its a fire breathing 1100 hp monster that has been tweaked, honed, and torqued. The dainty twin flower like turbos are gone. They were replaced long ago by a single turbo large enough to suck up a small child who dare get too close. Just looking at the motor you know right away that The Sin means business. When it’s on the road, you know it can handle any and all challengers; like a heavy weight prize fighter. However we never really drove The Sin except in and out of the doors of the shop. So we wouldn’t be able to tell you about how we went 140 mph at the drag strip or how the tires would break loose at 70 when the turbo spooled up. Nope. This is about refining the Sin. Making it look like a gold wedding band sitting in a jewelers case.

The Sin has a fresh single stage paint job. The paint obviously was in decent condition and the owner wanted some of the texture or as others call it (orange peel) removed.

We started with a complete sanding of the painted areas, this is done to remove peaks in the paint. Up close, the paint looks bumpy. We begin sanding with a firm block that will level the paint and remove the bumps.  We used 2000 grit paper followed with 3000 grit paper to remove as much texture as we could. This is a very delicate and nerve-racking task. You go too far and that’s it…no more paint. So we proceeded with caution.

Our next step was to compound the paint by removing the scratches from sanding and bring gloss back to the paint. This was done with a rotary polisher and a professional grade compound. This process does restore gloss however you have circular scratches, other wise known as swirl marks left in the paint. This is due to the abrasives in the compound and the abrasiveness of the pads being used to restore gloss.

The next step is the polishing step or refinement step. It was very tricky. The paint used on The Sin was very, very soft. Removing polish residue with super soft microfiber towels was adding light, faint scratches to the paint. Nothing like we’ve ever encountered before with a repainted vehicle. This process took several days and many microfiber towels to complete but, the finished results were outstanding.  You could look at the paint and see reflections just like a mirror.

We wanted to protect the paint with a paint coating. We chose Modesta BC-04 due to it’s film build and hard glass like layer. The Modesta acts like a barrier allowing dirt, dust and grime to be easily rinsed away. It’s also a very hydrophobic product that allows for easy washing and drying.

Many a sinful words were uttered while working on The Sin. However, just as many sinful things in life we were drawn to it and just couldn’t leave it alone.