Polishing my tiny............car!

[Splat]

If you haven't read the "Stickering-up" post, then go read that one first. It ends with a teaser for this one.....

In the process of applying the roundels, I noticed what terrible shape my paintwork was in. Not chipped or scratched, but dull and really rough to the touch with surface contaminants. I'd read all about "claying" bodywork, but never tried it myself. So I watched a couple of YouTube tutorials, bought an inexpensive kit from Halfrauds and set to work.

Actually, on such a small car, it wasn't really work at all. It probably took less than half an hour to thoroughly clay the whole vehicle, leaving the paintwork beautifully smooth again. I then broke out the Swissol kit that I hadn't used since I got rid of my Ferrari some eight years ago, and properly waxed the car. The result is better paintwork than at any time in my ownership.....

....which put the interior to shame.

You may recall that my car was "professionally" built in 2006 for its first owner. He paid for all of the right bits, but assembly was obviously with the bottom line in mind. A Caterham racer, the first owner drove the car into the ground over four years and I bought it as a ratty heap just four years later. I've been slowly restoring it ever since, running it in the summer and tackling a different aspect of the rebuild each winter.

The dash was an early project. The car was built with modern, cream-faced Smiths gauges, with plastic toggle switches and warning lights fired into the padded dash at random from a shotgun. I stripped the padding off, replaced with period Lucas switchgear and black-faced Smiths gauges, recalibrating the MGC speedo for the 13" wire wheels. I also trimmed the door pockets with matching vinyl.

But from the day I bought it, the rest of the interior had bugged me. The carpets were worn and badly faded. I bought a replacement carpet set from the factory, but shied away from fitting it. It's languished in the garage loft for about five years now.

I enquired on here, some two years ago, as to whether or not anybody had experience of dying carpet. I'd found a couple of companies Stateside offering dying kits, but only one here in the UK. I purchased their dye, colour matched to a sample of the new carpet and it again languished in the garage for a couple of years (it has no shelf life). I knew that if it didn't work, or made matters worse, then I'd be into the job that I was trying to avoid; namely, re-carpeting the tub.

So, with my paintwork newly refinished, I decided to give it a go. I know, you're asking yourselves, "Just how fussy is this chap? It's only a little fading!" Well, here's the first photo. The interior, seats removed:

[Splat]

You might note that it's not just the rear bulkhead that's in poor shape. All of the horizontal surfaces had been bleached to some extent or other. So I thoroughly washed the carpet and masked all of the vinyl in preparation before applying dye:

[Splat]

The initial results were highly encouraging:

[Splat]

.....and I used all 1.5 litres of product (1 litre of dye and .5 litres of wetting agent) on the faded rear bulkhead and the horizontal surfaces:

[Splat]

The water soluble dye took a day or so to dry, eventually leaving the carpet well covered, but "crispy". So I decided to give it a light "Vax" to soften it up again:

[Splat]

Yup, it washed straight out. You can dye both wool and nylon, but not acrylic fibres. Guess what Westfield use? So.......

[Splat]

I wasn't going to glue the new carpet directly over the old glue, so I set-to with Nitromors paint stripper:

[Splat]

Hang on a mo. That's not looking too bad, is it? Lots of hard work with steel wool removed the worst of the scratches and I did a bit of research into aluminium polishing using power tools. Namely a household drill. Four full and very exhausting days in the garage later (thankfully in three stints separated by days at work to allow muscle recovery) and I had this:

[Splat]

As for the re-trimming, that came together remarkably quickly. The rear bulkhead I covered in the same vinyl as the dash, seats and door cards:

[Splat]

The floors, passenger footboard, sills, handbrake mechanism and gear lever surround are ribbed-rubber matting from Woolies, held down (and easily removable) with press studs: