Paint Correction:
One thing that bothered me from day one of getting this truck was how bad of condition the paint was in. I did a bunch of research to try and figure out how to bring the faded, oxidized, and water spotted black paint back to life and ultimately ended up going with a two step compound and polish from Griots Garage. I really like these products as they don't dust significantly and become less abrasive as you polish (i.e. the compound initially starts as a compound and slowly turns to more of a polish as you use it.) I picked up a Griots G9 random orbital polisher off Amazon (strongly recommend a random orbital if you do this yourself over a standard rotary as its significantly safer to use and makes polishing easier). I then ceramic coated it with some gtechniq Crystal Serum Lite. Overall, I think the tired paint came out looking great! Heres some pics of the products I used and after shots.
This is the best before photo I could find. Notice how the back quarter panel looks like someone took steel wool to it with all the scratches:
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And the afters:
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Overall, I'm really happy with how the paint came back to life and IMO looks great compared with what it did when I bought it. One thing I would do differently if I were to do it over again, is using a different coating or following up the crystal serum lite with Gtechniq EXO. The Exo helps to repel water, whereas the light is more of a gloss enhancer / protector. The downfall of using just light (like i did) is that it doesn't repel water real well which leads to waterspotting which I now have... I plan to do a one step polish again soon to hopefully remove the water spots and try out cerakotes new ceramic coating as its an all in one and see how it performs.
I've bought and sold a couple 4rs and have also polished them out and had great results on those aswell in reviving the old paint and its super satisfying to bring these old beasts back to their former glory. Some pointers for anyone wanting to try this: Our trucks have a very soft paint from the factory, which is suceptible to scratching easily. If your paint is in really rough condition, you'll want to start with a cutting pad followed up with a finer polish and finishing pad on your buffer to achieve the best result. If you only compound, itll lead cause the paint to have somewhat of a chalkly look to it and won't have as full of a shine. Think of compound similarly to using 400 grit sandpaper. It removes the major defects and scratches, but to really smooth the paint and make it shine you want to use a polish (similar to say 1500-2000grit sandpaper). Scratches and swirls in paint are caused by minor "valleys" in the paint which cause the light to refract unevenly back at your eye which is why you see the scratch. When you compound and polish paint, you are removing a very, very, very fine layer of the surface of the paint, which removes the "valleys" and levels the paint causing it to refract evenly to your eye. There are several youtube channels that show good techniques for polishing and do a much better job of explaining this then I did. I'd recommend pantheorganizer, ammonyc, or diydetail's channels on youtube if you'd like to learn more.
