Craig posted on October 07, 2010 21:49
With the 89 RRC running and back in my driveway it was time to clean up the exterior. While my white DII with colormatched bumpers seemed to grab attention whether I wanted it or not, my goal for this truck is a classic, clean, simple appearance. It’s a trail rig, and I intend to modify it for that use, but I’d like to do so in as subtly as possible.
Armed with an armful of rags, and a fresh bottle of rubbing compound it was time to get to work. The hood was in the worst shape and it along with the front bumper took 4 hours on the first day. I did the sides in 3 hours on the second day, and the roof took another 4 hours. I did the hood with Meguiars rubbing compound and found it difficult to work with. When that bottle ran out, I switched to Turtle Wax Professional rubbing compound and had much better, and faster, results. After finishing the rest of the car, I went back to the hood because despite spending 4 hours on it, it still had several hazy/faded areas. One good treatment with the Turtlewax and it was all cleaned up.
I then spent another 3 hours applying Rejex, a polymer based protective coating for the paint, some Black Again to the plastic trim pieces, and cleaned the wheels/tires.
While I was working on the exterior, I also removed all non-factory decals, replaced the front ARB bumper decal with a new one, removed the window tint on the rear window, cleaned all of the windows, and removed the Yakima load bars.
To remove the window tint, I simply applied a little heat with a heat gun, and slowly peeled it off. This, along with some Goo-gone is usually enough to remove window tint. In this case, the tint all came off, but a lot of residue was left on the rear window. I still need to remove it.
Before:
After:
