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Nissan Skylline R32 GTR V Spec II
TREATMENT
- Wash & Decontamination
- Multi-Stage Paint Correction
- Opti-Coat Pro+ Paint Protection (2 layers)
DESCRIPTION
This stunning example of an unmodified R32 GTR was imported a few years ago. It has an incredibly low 22,000 kms on the clock! A car better than this simply won’t be found outside of a museum. It’s owner, upon receiving the car, went about coating it himself.
Now, I’m never ever one to discourage people from giving detailing a go themselves. Everyone starts somewhere, and I applaud those willing to spend the time and effort on their cars. Especially in a society where so many people are time-poor. There is an immense satisfaction that can be gained with achieving results yourself. As well as learning a craft and continuing to improve your skills.
By the owner’s own admission, his coating effort wasn’t great, and whilst I would never put down the efforts of others, he was quite happy for this, in his own words, “to be made an example of”. He said he’s more than happy for people to learn from this, and that I shouldn’t be afraid to write it up. You’ve got to respect that!
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So, with that in mind, here are the befores and afters
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Unsurprisingly, the factory Nissan paint was quite soft and sticky to work with. Anyone who's worked with this sort of Nissan paint before will know what I mean. With anything, as long as you have an understanding of the nature of it, you can work with it to try and get the best out of it. Work smaller areas, not for too long and without generating too much heat and you're on your way. Try to do the opposite of any of these and the paint will punish you, generally in the form of leaving sticky polish residue, or dusting like hell, or both. Clean or switch out pads often, and work as cleanly and methodically as you possibly can. This is a good mantra for any paint correction but it is absolutely critical when dealing with soft sticky paints. This particular car had light to moderate swirling, but also there was a lot of old coating residue, from when the original coating applied by the owner was not knocked down as well as it could have been. By "knocking down" I mean proper buffing of the coating with a microfibre cloth to remove excess "high spots" before it cures.
Here you can see a fair bit of haze in addition to the swirls. The haze is high spots in the coating as mentioned before
High spots
Light swirling
More high spots
Fluorescent diffused lighting is particularly good at picking up coating high spots, as can be seen here
Final pics. Needless to say the owner was over the moon with the result. Gloss and clarity levels now really show off this beautifully preserved piece of machinery. I get such a buzz working on such fine examples as this. It really doesn't get much better!
Gunk was also cleaned out of panel gaps to restore that factory fresh feel. Especially on the lower panels where water tends to pool and dry up, leaving old residue behind
The original factory V spec II badge is still remarkably well preserved for the car's age
So clean and tidy
In some circumstances, depending on access and design, I would remove the spoiler in order to polish areas that are more difficult to get to with the spoiler still fitted. In this situation though, due to the fact that the spoiler has probably never been removed since it was installed at the factory, it was firmly in place, even after loosening the bolts holding it on. I opted not to attempt to prise it off the boot for fear it might actually lift the factory paint. I carefully re-tightened the bolts and then hand-polished the areas that a machine couldn't get to. Sometimes compromises have to be made in order to preserve the overall integrity of the car. Better to have some light swirls that can't completely be removed than to risk destroying the factory paint by lifting it off the panel.
The stock exhaust tip is a thing of beauty to see on a car like this
