Aircraft Detailing - Piper Arrow

One of the Hardest Aircraft i ever detailed.

When we first saw images we presumed this would be a straight forward detail. The paint looked faded but not too bad. Boy were we wrong. This Plane was one of the smaller ones but the challenge to restore the colour was huge. The paint had been sprayed 4+ years ago however it had sat out in Florida heat without any protection from the Sun's UV rays. The paintwork was completely faded and all red had turned pink. This meant the owner had 2 options. Respray it for tens of thousands of pounds or let us have a go at restoring the finish.

The Picture below shows the extent to the damaged paint. The white was also faded and the shine was completely gone. You couldn't see any reflection whatsoever.

Faded Paintwork on the Piper had made this red section turn pink

The image below shows the start of the process which involved using 1000 grit wet sanding paper followed by 2000 then 3000 grit sanding paper. using 3M fast cut compound we could speed up the process. Lots of dead paint was removed from the clear coat.

Machine Polish paintwork on red aircraft

Antony Clay Barring the bodywork on the piper plane

The random orbital polisher took out the swirl marks. Day one was certainly the hardest but progress was being made.

Random Orbiter Machine Polisher on Plane Paint