Danielle's Practice Chevy

[danielle]

By no means is this one to brag about...but I feel pretty darn proud of myself.

My boyfriend traded his 97 Grand Cherokee for a 99 Silverado that has seen MANY better days in its life.
I am still failing to see where the good deal in this trade was...other than I brought the paint back to life.

The guy selling the chevy didn't bother to even sweep the thing out, it was nasty and still needs help on the interior but only the exterior was my job.
Lee asked me if I would be willing to give it a try to see if I could bring the paint back to life....it was majorly oxidized or something on every panel except the hood, driver bed side and the roof. All other panels were heavily oxidized/hazed over and severely scratched under all of that.

Due to work schedules, this took me over 3 weeks to complete...but only 11 hours over the course of 3 days...and I could have spent a lot more time on it but I was getting quiet a bit of black on my pads after the 3rd passes still so I didn't wanna take it to far.

I didn't get a lot of pictures as once I got started it was like I got bit by a bug.

I first just hand washed and clayed a panel to see if it was even worth pursuing....and it was
(suprisinginly the clay didn't pick anything up at all...I was shocked)

First day consisted of:
Washing the whole truck by hand.
Did driver door and front fender and part of bed side with Pro Polish before I tried SSR2.5 on a green pad and fell in love.
Ran out of product and pads were dirty so I called it a day after 5 hours.
And we also removed the nasty half faded pinstripe. You can still tell where it is after I got done, but oh well. He is just going to sell it so it doesn't matter at this point. And if I kept going I'm pretty sure I would have taken all the paint off.

Pictures:

Imagine this...all over the truck. Poor thing was nasty. And the previous owner even worked at a body shop.... :smt017




50/50 after 1 pass with pro polish


Poor rusty truck before I quit for the day


some reflection shots after clean-up on day 1




Some outside shots after day 1 with only driver side being half done


Pass side fender











Day 2
Finished the rest of driver side and tailgate with SSR2.5, went over with Pro Polish and topped it off with Black Hole.

No pictures for this day except for at the end (barn was dark and cramped on space).

Day 3 (Today)
Started and complete hood and passanger side with SSR2.5, Pro Polish and black hole. Then topped the whole truck off with a coat of wax. Polished the chrome pieces with Pro Polish and cleaned up all the black trim pieces and washed windows.

Pictures:

Start of the bed side





2 passes with SSR2.5





same bedside after PP



And some outside after she was all done pictures:












So, there she is. Like I said...she's far from a goregous sports car like most bragging threads are, but I'm pretty proud of my practice work.
Lee was telling a co-worker about me working on it and how great the paint was looking and said co-worker wants me to work on his truck now I guess.
I haven't even gotten to do my own car all the way yet, lol.

Honestly, the whole truck was beyond my level of ability...but I did what I could. I think it needed wet sanded to really bring it all out. As you can see it is still pretty swirly after all that work. In most places with really bad scratches, they can still be caught with my finger nail. So, it is what it is. It's done and will hopefully be sold in a week or 2. And best of all...it looks tons better than it did when I started.

So I hoped you enjoyed and ignored the rusty, almost non existent rockers.

 

[Poorboy]

nice work ... you can't make a diamond out of mud .. I would say you got as much as the paint would allow without going to a rotary and compounds ... I would say Lee is very happy

 

[BigLeegr]

but I was getting quiet a bit of black on my pads after the 3rd passes still so I didn't wanna take it to far.

Do you mean black paint or black as in dirty? The truck should be clear coated, so you shouldn't be getting any black paint off it, unless the (body shop) guy did a quickie paint job on it some time ago and went for one coat of color rather than a base/clear.

 

[sscully]

That turned out great !

something is up with the paint if you pull a pad back and it is black, but the clay got nothing.

Keep in mind to tape the rust areas ( looks like rust just behind the driver's door ) when you are going after it. Last thing you need is to pick up a small particle in the spot and run that pad over a panel, creating super swirls.

Mom's 2001 Mini Van has seen better days, and the quarter panel by the rear tires is rusted. I tape them off with ~ 1/16" to 1/8" of an inch over lap to good paint, and try to go to the edge of the tape.

when I am done with the LSP on the paint, I remove the tape, and use a MF drop towel ( when I drop mine, they get cut in half- Steve likes it when you do that :lol: ) cut off a small part, and use a wipe on walk away sealant on that area.

Great job on Lee's new truck.
Keep an eye on it to see if it hazes back up.
Could be the hot iron paint job at one time, and they single stage painted it ( the SIL new to her Mustang was that way ).
Next time you can look, check around the rubber trim by the windows and door area, to see if you can find a tape line. That is where I found it on the Stang, red over red tape line by a rubber door gasket. They did a good job of taping it off, took me ~ 10 min to find it.

 

[danielle]

I'm 99.9% sure it was paint as we washed it really well, clayed and washed again and before I did each panel I was wiping it down with spray and wipe and getting nothing. Black only showed up on the pads while using 2.5 and PP. I have no doubt that it was repainted at some point as there were several spots that had a brown tint showing.
Truck hasn't been outside since, but I think it still looks ok. Hopefully it wont be around long enough to find out if it lasts or not.
This was basically just to get it shined up enough to make it look decent to sell.

 

[danielle]

I do have another question...kinda off topic but oh well.

I am trying to figure out what to charge Lee (I owe him money for repairs on my car, so this was my way of working part of the balance off).
I spent 11 hours on it total.
Purchased $130 in supplies (not all of it was for this truck and the stuff I did purchase for it, I did not use all and will be going to my stash for future use.

So...what is a good guideline to go by on figuring out how to charge? I am by no means a pro or anything close to it.
I really have no idea where to even start to consider charging.

 

[heck]

it's very hard for some one to say how much your time is worth. What is the market price in your area for the work you have done?
My guess $20.00 to $25.00 an hour, or you could charge by the foot?

 

[danielle]

A guy he knows quoted him $150 for interior/exterior detail on his other truck (near mint compared to this one).

I've been thinking $100...but when he told me that I kinda felt like i was charging to much since my expertise isn't as good as this said person. But this job was a lot worse than other job quoted...idk if that is the guys flat rate or not.
I went to a body shop with the G6 for a quote for paint overspray removal and was told $450 (3 years ago) for a all over job to remove all the specks and bring paint back to life.

So idk, I wanna be fair but at the same time, I'm having a hard time deciding how much my time is worth. $100 has just been in mind for awhile. That'd be 9.xx/hr for the time I spent (11 hours).

How does the by the foot theory work?

 

[BigLeegr]

By the foot is usually used on boats and RV's. If the item is 100 feet long, you charge $ x 100 feet, rather than $ x hours spent on it.

 

[sscully]

Figure out what you make at your day job, and use that as the basis x 11 hours.
That shows you what you would make somewhere else. With that as the background, 100.00 for that work to me seems fair.
You might not have a business card and letter head, but that does not mean you are not going as good or better work.

The 150.00 interior / exterior job, who knows what they were really going to do for that amount, and it was not as bad of a job.
That seems cheap to me, even with the zone difference.
- I would expect maybe an extractor on the interior, quick interior scrub down, and the exterior work it with an AIO; polish - glaze - LSP, maybe run over it with another LSP of some kind after that.
The only real test is after it is washed a few times as to what the quality of the 150.00 job would have been.

I am a bit jaded with low cost detail jobs from "pro shops", and have seen too many AIO / glaze fill in jobs that turn back to defect city once they are washed ( correctly ).
Detail Kings ( not Nick V ) in the metro area here, is known for this type of quick- sloppy production work. Heck they even charge extra for bringing them "too dirty" of a car ( which what they use to boost the price if you don't go for the add ons ).

Ivan here in the metro area, for that amount of work, would charge 650.00 and up at his shop, depending on size.
He is not cheap, but he does defect correction, and takes the time to do it right. The truck size I think it would be closer to 950.00.

Given Ivan is a pro, but 1/10th the costs still seems like a good going price.

 

[Chevyguy]

When figuring what to charge, you have three factors to consider, condition of the vehicle's paint, cost of supplies( it is part of doing business), and time. If you figure half the supplies you bought were for the job, and a lowly $8 per hour to correct the paint problems you are looking at $153.00. Don't sell yourself short on the work you did. A pro doing the same work would have charged anywhere from 2 to 3x that price.

 

[danielle]

Thanks for the replies guys. It's slowly helping me to figure out a price, lol.

I enjoyed doing it as it was a great learning experience and I got to learn some more tricks with product vs pads and got a lot of practice in. So I walked away gaining more than anything in that aspect. The truck was awful...those pictures don't do it justice....it was bad.
It's still sitting in the barn and needs rinsed before he lists it. So I honestly can't say if I will see how it holds up, but anything is better than the way it was before and will hopefully help him get more money out of it.

 

[Atrocity79]

Awesome job on getting that paint to shine. I've never worked on anything quite that bad.