Detailing Your 3000GT or Stealth

Written by: Gabe "RacerX_GTO"

Introduction

Spring is around the corner and then summer. You may or may not be ready to start waxing up your ride so I went ahead, for the complete heck of it, compile this document to instruct on how to detail the 3000GT and Stealth. "Yeah Racer, that's nice, but I already know how to do my own car." This is not intended to change your way of doing things or sway you to use another product, if you are satisfied with your method, then keep doing what you are doing. If you are one of those that is not sure where to begin or what to use, this document may help based on my experience. Additionally, you may learn something that you never knew. Let's begin. Detailing is like playing music. The more you practice the better you get at it. In detailing, there is always a new product to try and quicken the process and save you time. What it boils down to is, you can only save so much time before you have more products than you need instead of putting more time into using the few that you have.

Rules

1. You must remember at all times. If it touches the ground, consider it useless unless its a wheel brush, and especially the clay bar! Touching the ground picks up glass, gravel, dirt, quartz, and other kinds of crap and you can rub this into your paint with the lightest of pressure and it will create scratches. This happens the most to wash mitts, applicators, and drying/buffing microfiber cloths. These things are covered below.
2. You must remember at all times. Never use moderate or heavy pressure. If you need moderate or heavy pressure, your doing something wrong. Use a lubricant, a spritz of water, remove the product and try again with a thinner coat.
3. Have a bottle of water or Gatorade, do not drink soda pop or fruit juices. Beverages with a lot of sugar will mess up your hydration process. You can't dehydrate because you read this thread, printed it out to wash your car and then try to come after me.

Detailing can be very intensive in regards to technical details. It can be broken down into three major areas, repair, restoration and rejuvenation. Repair and restoration may involve, but are not limited to completely replacing and repainting surfaces, whereas rejuvenation works with your existing condition with minimal amount of cost and labor. This is just a basic guide, so I'll keep it simple.

Inspection

Inspecting your car surface will reveal how you need to prepare the rejuvenation process. Deep cuts down to the primer or metal, deep scratches, rock pits, clearcoat peeling, missing or fading, blotchy patches, permanent discoloration, chemical burns, graphic vinyl anomalies, bird droppings will require paint repair. This document assumes that all surfaces on your 3000GT or Stealth are at least in "good" to "excellent" condition. Many times you will hear me say surface rather than paint, that's due to the fact that a stock 3000GT and Stealth paintjob has a clearcoat finish. We are not really detailing the paint.

Custom paint. If you painted your car with an acrylic or enamel, there is no need to alter the procedure. Lacquer, just be careful on polishing. 3M protective films. You should have received care instructions from the application firm, nonetheless, you do not polish this film with conventional methods. It should be maintenance free with occasional detail spray care.

Wash

Engine

I usually get this out of the way first. There are do it yourself engine detail kits or you can take it to the self service wash. What I prefer to do is send the car out to have just the engine cleaned and dressed so I can focus on the surface. Some shops can put the car on a lift and scrub under the car as well. But keep in mind if you do it yourself and you have a nice driveway, it will mess it up as grease, grime and whatnot drips out of your engine compartment and flows in the gutter. Technically, there are Federal/State laws prohibiting fluids other than water from going down the drain. Hey, I'm just passing the message along.

Surface

Important! Ensure the car surface is cool to the touch, it is best to start in the morning after the car has sat overnight. Warm panels will soften clearcoat and cause swirls, especially on dark or black cars! Rinse the car with a wide nozzle, rinse the wheels using a dense stream. This will remove loose dirt and remove the first layer of brake dust off. Fill a bucket with a heavy concentration of Dawn and fill with water. Put in your first microfiber wash mitt to soak. When starting the wash process, always start at the top and work your way down. Dawn has a high alkali content which is good for removing stubborn debris and some layers of wax with each wash. I call it, the "First Blood" car washing liquid. The benefit is you have a "clean" surface from wax and polish, kind of like a painter using a new canvas and not a canvas of scrubbed clean of paint. I don't recommend using Dawn with every wash after you applied your wax for the season. Wash your car with either Zymol Wash or Meguires Gold Class. I cringe everytime I see local car wash groups using dishwash soap or when they dry towels on the hot asphalt. If you read my primary rules, you see why that is a big no-no.

Tip Mr. Clean wash system can be used to shorten wash duration after your detailing is completed.

Rinse the car again. Gently wash with lots and lots of soap. Stay away from the lower 1/3 around the entire car as this is where it tends to really get grimy, especially along wheel wells and bumpers. Rinse the car.

Change the soap out and wash the same upper 2/3 again, this time, wash the lower 1/3 and change out soap and the wash mitt if it starts getting funky fast. Rinse and repeat.

The goal at this point is to be able to wash it with a clean untouched mitt and not discolor the wash mitt. The mitt will collect the grime and become unusable the next time around.

Spray the wheels with a wheel cleaner depending on the type of wheel finish, ex: Chrome, alloy, polished alum, machined alum. This will loosen the tough brake dust caked on your wheels. Using the bucket of soap that should still be clean, use a "soft" brush and soak it in the soap, lightly scrub the wheels and rinse.

Dry

Is a chamois good? No, use a larger microfiber towel or a clean cotton beach towel. Take your leather chamois, tie it up and give it to the dog to bury somewhere. The waterblade can be used, as long as it is clean and dust particles do not engrave even lines into your surface.

Prep

Important! Ensure the location you have chosen is clean. A shady tree is good as long as that tree does not vomit excessive amounts of sap. If you live near a dusty gravel or dirt road with frequent traffic, you are screwed. It's best to park the car in a garage or take it to a friends house where the air is free of dust.

Take the stick of clay and put it in your back pocket. Get it warm. Automotive clay is designed to "pull" contaminants from the paint that are invisible to the naked eye and adhere to the surface of the clay. Your paint is like your teeth, it may be smooth, but its definitely porous under extremely close scrutiny. Scratches also hold contaminants in them. Even after a through job washing the car the first time, stuff will still be in the paint. The clay bar helps remove fallout/pollution, sap, and embedded road grime.

Now the clay bar, flatten it like a pancake. With a spray bottle of lubricant (small concentration of soap, the rest water, most clay bar kits come with a bottle), spray a 8x8 inch section so its nice and wet and in a straight motion up and, rub the clay on the paint using plenty of lubricant and do this to the entire car, top 2/3 first. A clay bar should be able to do 2 medium size cars or one car in bad shape.

After claying, rinse the car and wash it once using the still pristine wash mitt and a new bucket of soap.

Once the car is dry, take 3/4 inch wide, blue painters tape by 3M/Scotch. Begin taping the open seams that separate body panels. The purpose here is to prevent polish, wax dust and build-up in the seams making it more difficult to clean in those tight spaces. The last thing you want to waste time with a q-tip getting the stuff out.

Polish/Wax

Machine or Hand?

I use an orbital buffer with a 7" polishing head. "But Racer, I have the 12" heavy duty one!" Are you polishing RV's? NASCAR trailers? Airplane wings? The 7" and 5" heads are great for sports cars, they can get into the irregular curves nicely. Sorry, but toss your 12 or save it for the racing trailer and get something smaller for your Stealth or 3000GT. "But Racer, don't the pro's use Porter Cable and Bosch?" Yes, the pro's use those angle grinders, and they grind nice bonnet swirls into a perfectly good paint job very well too. What I'm saying is, unless you know how to use the professional line of buffers without creating a nice swirled pattern, stick with the orbital. It's very forgiving and not as prone to create swirls on your finish. Have about six extra terry cotton bonnets ready to go. Compound?

3M make some of the most widely used and proven compounds. A compound is used to remove wax or remove scratches. For scratches, its essentially a liquid that has the ability of 1200-2000 grit sandpaper. Ultra fine and used carefully. Best left to a professional unless you practice on junk yard panels. The safest bet is Kit Scratch remover or Scratch X.

Wax is like picking a girlfriend. A group of them might share a lot in common, but there will usually be one girl that EVERYONE goes after and for different reasons. Pick your wax the same way.

Short summary of various products

• The best looking are Zymol, Carnauba and Zaino.
• The least expensive is the Meguiar's and Mothers.
• The most durable by far is the Carnauba coat, Zaino followed by Meguiar's and Mother's.
• The easiest to apply and remove are Zymol, followed by Meguiar's, Mother's, and Zaino.
• If you want 'strong like bull' durability with in the middle optics, Zaino is your product.
• If you don't want to make it an all day adventure and just want a one bottle solution, pick up a bottle of Zymol Cleaner Wax. It can be applied with a buffer and wipes off very easy. For the money and shine, this is the best all around product. You can do a Zymol bottle and call it quits for the day. If you are a perfectionist or are entering the car into a show, read on.
• Use the waxes sparingly. Thicker doesn't do anything except take longer to cure and is harder to wipe off, especially if a wax that must cure. Use a consistent coat across each panel. Use a slightly damp microfiber applicator and remove with a microfiber cloth. Its applied in the same up and down and side to side motion as the glaze and is removed with a back and forth motion. Allowing it to cure after you removed the residue based on the instructions for each will provide the best results.

The Only Three Products You Will Ever Need

1. Meguires Mirror Glaze #82 Swirl Remover
2. Meguires NXT Next Generation
3. Yellow Carnauba paste ([1])

I will put this formula up against anything you want to throw at me, that's how sure I am of this combination.

Using Swirl Remover

Either by hand or with the orbital buffer, apply swirl remover to the bonnet pad first, never apply product to the finish. The key here is to get enough product on the pad so that dry pad does not touch the surface. Once you've applied enough swirl remover on the pad, place the pad on the car surface and switch it on. Let the weight of the buffer do the work, do not push down on it like you are driving a jackhammer into concrete. Some liquid may splash around once you switch the buffer on, but you will also learn how to apply enough product to prevent splashing. Never let the buffer go dry, reapply as necessary. Work small sections at a time, wiping just before it dries. You can work the same section over again until the swirl marks are worked out of the clearcoat. Wipe with a soft, clean cotton terry

Using NXT

This will go on much easier than the swirl remover at this point. CHANGE THE BUFFER PAD with a CLEAN one. Do the same thing as you did with the swirl remover, pre-soak the pad with NXT and go for it. You will notice the NXT almost glides on very slick. Wipe with microfiber towels when using NXT, you are now laying down a synthetic glaze that will shine your car like you've never seen. But we are not quite done yet. After the wipedown, let NXT cure for about an hour. Technically, you could stop here, but if you want that much more of a shine and protection, continue with the last step.

Using Carnauba

I have spoken with Meguires technicians about laying Carnauba over their NXT and I received mixed responses about doing it at all, but they agreed on one aspect as serving the final layer. The elements will attack the carnauba layer first over the NXT layer, keeping the shine going until you recoat the surface again with carnauba as part of a maintenance schedule. If you use ProWax's Yellow Carnauba, you are using the same carnauba professional detail shops use. It's rugged and creates that much more of a shine in addition to the NXT. The way you apply the wax is with a foam applicator. Now, unlike the blended carnauba waxes that you buy off the auto parts store shelves, this carnauba is pure, and will haze white, very white! That is normal with this type of carnauba. Wipe the carnauba with microfiber clothes.

Buff out with a new set of microfiber towels. Check and recheck your work to make sure you didn't miss an area.

Note Moreso with dark colored cars, the surface may haze up on the hood or anywhere it gets hot afterward, carefully wipe the haze with microfiber. So what does that mean? Whether you know it or not, all waxing products evaporate off your car surface if they don't get washed off. The evaporation haze shows on darks unfortunately.

Addressing the 3000GT Fake Glass Panel

First gen through 1998.

If you are an owner of the 3000GT and have a fake glass panel that has seen better days, this will interest you. The fake glass panel itself is plastic with a clearcoat film that turns yellow from being UV'd to death. If the current condition of your fake glass panel is somewhat dull or just a little shiny, take a cotton terry cloth and Kit Scratch remover and work it over and over until it shines again. Once it shines like brand new, layer the heck out of it with carnauba wax. Put several layers on it and continue to keep carnauba on it as part of maintenance. Should the fake glass panel turn out shiny with blotches of dull, then the surface is too far gone to rejuvenate. It needs to be replaced.

Pull the painters tape off and touch up the seams with NXT by hand with a cloth. Do not rub with heavy pressure, the seams are the thinnest of the painted surfaces and it doesn't take much to wear the paint off!

Black Trim, Rubber Window Trim, Foglights

Apply with Lexol Vinylex (baby blue bottle). Be careful not to accidentally dab your waxed surface, it won't hurt it, it just looks like an oops. Apply wax on your light pods. If you have glass pods, don't worry too much about it, but if you have plastic pods, the wax will protect them from peeling and fading.

Interior

Use your white cotton terry's for the interior.

Use clean microfibers for the glass.

Windows

Some of you use Windex. Some of you swear by Windex. Don't use Windex for automotive glass. Yes, I am flat out telling you not to use Windex. Use automotive detail glass cleaner. I recommend Turtle Wax Detail Window cleaner. Use it on the inside and outside. If your wiper blades chattered all winter, they won't anymore when you use this type of glass cleaner. Others say use RainX, but after time the RainX wears off and the chattering starts again. With the glass cleaner, you don't have that problem. Dashboard, door panels and everything plastic.

Take a bucket of warm water and Dawn soap. Get a new dishwashing sponge that has soft sponge on one side, and synthetic scrubbing nap on the other and drop it in the bucket. Take the sponge, squeeze the water out of it and begin to scrub your dashboard. Do the same with the door panels. Avoid cloth parts. "Wait, Racer, wont you scrub the natural oils off of the plastic parts using Dawn?" Yes, you will, but that's why you recondition those surfaces with Lexol Vinylex after you are done cleaning. Those of you with beige door panels, if your handle is black from months of grabbing it with dirty hands, you will see some magic happen before your eyes, a clean door! Keep working with the sponge, over and over again until it is clean. If there still exists dirt in the cracks, take a soft bristled toothbrush and work it out that way using the soap wash in the bucket. Continue to do the same for the shift column, rear panels, hatch shade. Wipe dry with terry clothes. Get a large box of q-tips and scrub out the vents and any hard to reach areas.

Seats

If you have leather, you can use a damp rag to wipe dust and dirt. Lexol Leather Cleaner(orange bottle) will help break up some of the soils in the grain. Use a very soft bristle toothbrush to get deep in the grain. Careful with leather as to not scrub off the sheen. Recondition the leather with Lexol Leather Conditioner. Apply with a terry cloth and wipe off the excess with another terry cloth.

Cloth patterned seats, please refer to my carpet cleaning notes. Automobile cloth seats are made of extremely durable olefin fabric and can take a good scrub. After cleaning, you can apply Teflon or Scotchguard in a spray bottle. Use a horsehair brush to spread it out evenly.

Headliner

Using a clean white terry cloth, take Isopropyl Rubbing Alcohol(90%) and apply to the cloth and gently touch up dirty areas. Be careful with the headliner, if its the original, it should be a very delicate fabric by now. You may want to dab the soils out rather than swipe. "Racer, why alcohol?" Alcohol is another wonder. It's solvent enough to break up grease and oil, it evaporates clean and stays clean.

On Carpet

We never, ever shampoo carpets. Ever. Do not use those upholstery cleaner cans in automotive section. Do not use that self serve gizmo at the car wash and for gawd sakes, do not use that Rug Doctor/Bissell crap. "Why Racer?" These type of products are soapy and leave behind a residue that is a magnet for more dirt and dust to cling. Before long, your carpet will be dirty, but worse! Do not use Resolve or anything with that Oxy cleaner in it. "Why Racer?" These products bleach carpet and use optical brighteners to mask the bleach stain. A tell-tale sign that Resolve has been used is a bleached stain with a tint of green. "So what do I do Racer?" The absolute best way to clean your automotive carpet is by a hot water extraction method that uses solution based cleanser, dubbed 'steam cleaning'. You can have it cleaned by a truck mount carpet cleaner too. The solution revolves around this important ingredient and I'm going to throw you a big word. EVERY carpet cleaner should know exactly what they are using in their cleaning solution. Trisodiumpolyphosphate(tri-sod-ee-um-pol-ee-fos-fate) is the base of a hotwater extraction solution. Shampoo base solutions will not have this ingredient. IF you must use an off the shelf carpet cleaner in a spray bottle, use Folex. Otherwise I recommend Prochem carpet spotter or Stanley Steemer Spotter bottle. I often refer to those two spotters are miracle carpet cleaners.

IF you own hot water extraction cleaning equipment, or, if you want to rent one, you want to find a professional carpet cleaner supply store and grab a small jar of Dry Slurry made by Prochem. If you do end up renting a cleaning machine, toss out their soap and get some Dry Slurry. You want to use the upholstery wand to clean automobile interiors. The best cleaning procedure is to hold down the trigger while sliding the wand foreward and back in one direction. Then let off the trigger and go over the area you cleaned with dry strokes. If the area is too tight to go foreword and back, use 'pull' strokes. Place the wand at a starting point, pull the trigger and pull the wand toward you, then let up off the trigger. After a while you get the hang of it.

Spot Cleaning

Spot cleaning can be done by spraying a small amount of different spot cleaning solutions and extracting with the cleaning equipment.

• Grease/Oils - Isopropyl Alcohol or Citrus cleaner for carpets
• Pepsi, Coke, etc - Tannin Spotter
• Lipstick - Citrus spotter
• Coffee - Tannin spotter, apply, let sit for 10 mins then extract clean.
• Gum - Work out with Citrus gel then extract clean
• Milk/Latte - Protein spotter, work out then extract clean
• Kool-Aid, Hi C, - YOU ARE SCREWED. The coloring additive is an acid dye which is similar to that used in, of all things, dyeing carpet.

Coffee can be a pain, because if it landed on the carpet hot, chances are it may have burned in the carpet fibers making it difficult to release the color from the fibers. Remember, spots come out, stains are forever. I always advise Teflon or Scotchguard carpet protection to protect and help carpet fibers resist spills and wear. It's not a gimmick, the stuff works. "Ok, Racer, that sounds like allot of money just to clean carpet, and I don't exactly have one of those fancy machines you mentioned, what if I don't want to do all of that?" Alright, have you received any estimates from detailing shops or carpet cleaners? It should at least be their minimum charge. If you do not want to go through all of that trouble, get yourself a shop vac, a bottle of one of the two spotters I recommended and leave it at that.

Odors

Nothing is worse than a car interior that smells like a$$, piss or sour milk. I'm not going to comment on cigarette smoke, but it can be removed. Finding a pet accident is as simple as going through your car with a black light at night. The black light will reveal piss stains by a turquoise bluish glow. If you are one of those who has seen the MTV episode "Room Raiders", don't believe the crap that they find with the black light inspection, its BS, well it's MTV, do I need say more? I'm going to tell you, from what was told by me from a Sheriff CSI, because I know you are all thinking the same thing, but "man juice" under a black light will have a dark purple glow. There, you happy?

So if you find a dark purple streams on your seats in a very peculiar pattern... do I have to say it? Ok, I'll say it, it means somebody didn't score, they missed. Moving right along, once you pinpoint a pet accident, remember where it is so you can clean the area. There is urine stain remover from carpet cleaning supply stores as well as odor remover. An odor remover with active enzymes will eat away at odors and leave behind a fresh scent. Heck, you can find odor remover for skunk smell if you had that sort of problem in your car. A great odor remover product to put in a spray bottle is Stanley Steemer Odor Out.

Smoke

Ok, smoke has an awful smell that embeds itself onto surfaces. Smoke damage comes in two forms, one is from a car sitting in a garage of a house that was on fire. The second is tobacco products. Removing smoke smell from your car is a tedious process. Saving a car from smoke will yield high charges from a restoration company, that insurance companies will almost always write the car off as a loss than pay to have it restored. Depending how bad the damage, most of it can be 'zapped' out of the car.

Instead of scrubbing the interior with Dawn dishwash soap, scrub with Prochem - Ultrapac Restore. Use latex gloves. The product was designed for various surfaces, but will chew on your skin a little more than you care to experience. Leather seats or cloth seats will be difficult to get smoke scent removed. The same with everything behind the dashboard and in the vents. It's usually best to replace the seats all together but you can hope for the best with the next info.

Zapping the smoke smell out of interiors can be accomplished with an Ozone machine. Not to be mistaken for an Ion(Ionic Breeze) machine. Ozone takes away an oxygen molecule from the air, something that odors feed on. Ozone is a poisonous gas to humans as well. Ion machines just zap particles out of the air. Using a small fan to create circulation, and a small ozone machine on its low setting, seal the windows and let it run over night.

Important! -> If you plan on running an ozone machine, ensure that no water or moisture is present. Ozone, when mixed with water will make hydrogen peroxide and bleach out moist carpet. Keep ozone away from gas water heaters, for they are an explosive combination. Poorly made rubber products will degrade as well.

If you don't want to use ozone, a cost effective alternative if the fog machine. Using a fire restoration fog chemical and a small fogger, you can fog the interior of the car to help rid of the smoke scent. The chemical has a texture like oil. When it runs through the fogger, it goes through a heated tunnel that turn it into fog which is basically tiny particles of the chemical. The particles float around in the car and attach themselves to the odor causing bacterium and neutralize them. To apply the fog, seal the car seams with painters tape. Roll both windows up but leave one down just enough to get the nozzle of the fogger through. Remember to close the heater A/C control on the car to recirculation. Fog will leak out of the car through the vent grille just below the window. The only great thing about that is that it looks cool watching white fog come out any way it can. The bad part is that you loose the fog effectiveness if it leaks out. Plug in the fogger, let it heat up and fog away. Do not over saturate. Then stuff the open window shut with a large beach towel. Let the car sit for a few hours till the interior is clear again.

Final Details

This part is after you have completed everything, put all your tools aside, go over the car three more times and fine tooth comb everything you have done. This way if you missed anything, you can catch it.

Now, you can coat the tires with Meguires tire gel. I save the tires for last because if you gel them first, all the dust and crap just sticks to them making life miserable because you have to clean them again.

Conclusion

Everything here is just a basic outline of how to do a spring cleaning of your car. If you'll note, I didn't include painting certain trim, retouch the wheel wells etc. This could easily turn into a book. But for what it's worth, I hope you find this info useful in future preparation of your baby. Indulge in life... enjoy!