Started with a hose down. Was pleased to see that it had some form of wax on it applied, and relatively recently at that.
Sprayed the car with a mixture of degreaser, APC, and some Fairy liquid.
APC was then sprayed around and agitated with a brush.
The front grills were removed and hit with some APC as well.
Next up was the actual wash. Wanting to remove as much of the existing wax as possible, I opted for Fairy liquid. Lots of suds!
Rinsed the car and it was then time to clay the paint. As per the instructions I only used water as lube with great results.
Judging by how much clay I got through, the paint was in pretty bad shape with regards to surface contaminants. This was after one pass over a portion of the bonnet.
I wanted to make sure that the surface was as clean as possible so the car was hit with a spritz of Iron-X. Pretty hard to capture the bleeding from the black paint, but the wheels had a fair bit.
Rinsed the car again before hitting it with the DA to reveal some pretty bad swirls and some deep scratches.
I started off with two passes with Meguiar's DA Microfibre cutting compound followed with two passes of Auto Glym's Ultra Deep shine. Unfortunately I only managed to finish compounding the car before calling it a day.
Started the next day with passes of Ultra Deep Shine.
Now for the protection stage. To complement the compound, a coat of the DA finishing wax was used. Following that a I moved onto two coats of Meg's #16. One coat applied by hand, another with the DA.
Lastly, the car was finished with a coat of Liquid Wax on top.
Which resulted in the car looking much more presentable in my opinion. Complements the coupe nicely now!
Oh and the exhaust tips were removed, cleaned, dab of of Autosol and refitted.
Concluding thoughts; the paint is far from perfect, but she's scrubbed up nicely considering the age! Next for the car is a new rocker cover gasket and CCV hoses.