老爷车翻新

Dirt, mold, and decay. Across America, thousands of relics are trapped under layers of muck. Now, three of the best car detailing teams in the country are taking on the grind to get these cars back on the road. In just two days, they'll turn these piles of trash into stacks of cash. It's like a different car. This is Dirty Old Cars. Where are we headed to today? Well, we're going to see my buddy Bradley Chapman. What does he got? He's got this 1981 Camaro Z28. You're not from the generation I'm from, right? No, I'm young. Yeah, you're young. Sir, you're quite old. Yeah, I'm older, distinguished, exquisite. But for me, it's memories. My name is Jamie Buchanan. I'm the owner and operator of Visual Perfection in Morganton, North Carolina. I'm Caleb. Started working for Jamie when I was 15. It's the only job I've ever had, and I hope that it's the only job that I will ever have. It will be. I started Visual Perfection 30 years ago in my grandfather's garage. We are a small town detailing operation. We can fix pretty much whatever problem that they have. Sometimes, that is a blessing. And other times, it might be a curse. What's up? Hey, man. What's up? Good to see you, man. Good to see you. Caleb, Bradley. Bradley, nice to meet you. Cars are back this way. You ain't got your work cut out for you right here. We do. Oh, my gosh. That's nice and dirty, but nice and dirty. But gracious, look at how thick the dirt is, man. That's ridiculous. We got this white Camaro at the auction right around the early 2000s, about when I got my license. We drove it for a little bit, and then we let it collect dust, and here it was. Here, you look in there. So what do you see? Tom and Jerry have been running around here, and he just made them poop on himself. This is a rat palace. Mold, mold, and more mold. So do you have a number, or you got something to work towards, or? Um, I think we're going to ask around five. Yeah. What about the blue truck? What's going on with that? Let me take a look at it. Yeah. All right, this is a 65 Ford F-100. It's just as dirty. Oh, yeah. That's what caught my eye. Oh, hey. There's some bees right here. Hey. Caleb, you're up, boy. Yeah, Caleb, you're on that. Is it safe to open the door? OK. Shoot. Yeah, dirty girl inside and out. Rough on the lungs. Sell this one as well? I don't think we want to sell this. I would like to keep this and maybe pass it on to one of my kids. All right, so what if we make a package deal? I would like to be about 42 for the Z28. What if I clean the truck for you? I detail it and clean it the best that I can for free. And then we kind of got two birds, one stone. You know what I mean? I got me something. I did something for you. $4,200. If you clean that up, it sounds about right. Sounds good. Yeah? With me. Yeah, I like it. We're good. Sounds good. Appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate it. That's how you make a deal. Bradley wanted $5,000 for this Camaro, but I got it for 4,200 bucks. All I got to do is come back in a few weeks, pick up his Ford F100, give it the mother of all detailings, and it's a win-win, baby. Right there. Wow. All right, boys, tail of the tail. She's nasty. That smells like weak old baby poop and rat poop. It looks like there's rat poop in the floor, biggins. There's plenty of it. Yeah, biggins. Yeah, that's sasquatches. This Camaro is so cool. But listen, there's a lot of things we've got to do to get her back in shape. First, we're going to power wash and obliterate the dirt. Second, we'll clean the tires and the rims. Third, we'll decontaminate the paint. And last, we need to save the seats and the carpet. This is where the magic starts to happen. You're finally getting to the paint. Now it's like that. Squeaky clean, baby. All right. We've got the dirt, the dust, the oil, bug guts, whatever stuff kind of broke free. Now we're to the paint. The big guns are coming. We need the Iron Eater. This stuff's awful. But how you know it's working is it turns purple. Smells like death. Iron Eater is like this snotty gel-like substance. Once it starts running, it's breaking the metal and the debris off the paint to wash it completely off the car. All right. We're going to lift it up. I'm going to start stripping the interior. Let's get it. Wow. There's rat nests. They built a little condominium back here, haven't they? Smells like the Crypt Keeper. The Camaro is really starting to look amazing on the outside. But we're on to the inside now. And the smell is so bad in this car, it is absolutely atrocious. Now for a good pre-vac over here. Even though the dirt has made a protective layer over the carpet of this thing, we're going to have to use bioenzyme to make sure that we get the mold out of this to make sure it gives it a fresh, clean scent and not a masked botanical scent. So this is kind of a unique situation on this Camaro. You know when you play in the dirt, how it dries your hands out? The same. Blisters. It's calloused up, so it's popped open. So we're going to steam. We're going to clean that. We're going to open up those pores to clean it out. So now we're giving it the moisturizer that it needs to take it back in. It's going to lay into there and just make a nice texture. We're just going to lay in there and be what it needs to be. Good thing is it went from a crypt keeper to the bathroom bodywork. All right, boys. So we're putting the final touches on this Z28 before a potential buyer stops by later this afternoon. But first, I've called Bradley to come and take a look at this thing so he can see what's been sitting in his garage all of these years. You're not going to believe this thing. Are you ready? Can't wait. All right, boys. Crazy, ain't it? That is wild. I never thought they would turn out that good. This thing looks sharp. That is truly night and day. Oh, yeah. Truly night and day. We decontaminated the outside of the car in the wash process. We took the layers of skin off this snake. Then we polished it, brought it back up. That's what gives it such a shine and such a gloss. Brings back few memories. I think my cousin would love to drive this thing. I know he would. Look at this. Man. Yeah, that smells 10 times better, right? I took everything out of it. We really opened the pores up of that stuff so we could get that stench out. We're the rats that have their Taj Mahal everywhere. I think from the time we got it to now, this is probably the cleanest it's ever been. This guy is actually going to be coming this afternoon to look at this thing. Yeah? Yeah. Well, you might not have to worry about it. Yeah? Yeah, I'll just take it back. So I bought it for 4,200. I would think for you, 7,500 bucks. Man, you just got this thing two days ago. Now look, we didn't just work eight to five. You know, we was working eight to eight. Yeah, I mean, I really like it. Maybe we can make a deal around 65. That's great. I ain't even swapped the title over yet. That makes less paperwork. We're good to go, right? That sounds great, man. I appreciate it. I know, I appreciate it. This was a fantastic deal. I bought the Camaro for 4,200 bucks. I sold it back to Bradley for 6,500 bucks. And I made $2,300 in profit in just two days. I'm still going to pick up this Ford F100 in a few weeks. Listen, it's a win-win all day long. We don't typically buy and flip cars, but we always do our best to make them look damn good. And today we have a woman looking to do just that with a 72 Maverick. All right. So it's been sitting up for a minute since 2019. We need to get it cleaned up. Yeah. So this is a 1972 Ford Maverick. We got the original interior in here. Original interior. Oh yeah, it's been sitting for a while. I'm here today because I have a 1972 Ford Maverick. It belonged to my dad. He tragically passed away in 2019, and the car's been sitting out since. So I'm a big daddy's girl. So it's my most prized possession. It might not look like much to somebody else, but it's the most important thing I own. So it's been sitting since 2019? Didn't have the heart to do anything else with it. Sorry for your loss. Thank you. And it's time to get it cleaned up. It is going to need extensive compounding and polishing. This paint's disgusting. It's been subjected to everything and anything, allowing mold to grow on the surface of the paint. And it's also been exposed to prolonged periods of sun. These are the perfect storm in destroying a finish. It sat outside for so long, and you have so many contaminants that the process of removing all these contaminants might remove some of the paint that's been sitting underneath. With older vehicles, it's always a chance. No, I understand. My dad would have never let the car get like this. Just to see it cleaned up, I'll take that risk. To get this vehicle back to the way that you remember it, it's going to take us two days. It's going to cost about $1,500 in labor and materials. And if you're OK with that, we'll proceed. Let's get started. All right. All right, thank you. Not a problem. Thank you. In order to get this vehicle back to the way Teresa remembers it, we're going to start with a pre-soak to gently loosen any of the grime or mold that's attached itself to the surface of this vehicle. And hopefully we don't destroy it when we're pressure washing it. Then we're going to go through and compound, polish the vehicle. This is going to restore the finish back to what she remembers. Last but not least, we're going to go in and hand scrub the interior, try to bring it back to its original state. And in order to be able to do that within two days, we've got a lot of work ahead of us. I get nervous sometimes when we get cars like this because there's a large margin of error. No, small margin of error. Potential. Potential margin of error. Potential. This car means a lot to her. It was her father's. The last thing we want to do is damage a family heirloom. You've got a 40-plus-year-old car, so we got to proceed with caution on pretty much every aspect. Oh, you're getting dirty by floors. Well, buddy, dirty job. Just throw it in there. Thank you. There you go. Such an asshole. Car's really, really, really, really dirty. And whatever elements it was exposed to are extremely stubborn. You can hear the surface of the paint. Sounds like sandpaper. Sounds like your hand running over sandpaper. The damage to the paint is a lot more severe than we initially thought. It's going to take way more time and really should cost more than we quoted for. But we're gonna have to get the rest of these contaminants off just to be able to see. So we finally got the Maverick free of all the contaminants that have been sitting on this vehicle for God knows how long. The paint is rough. It's pitted. It is severely damaged. The next step is to try to figure out the safest way to level this stuff and get that finish rejuvenated. So I'm gonna start at a lower speed. Try to get the finish to wake up a little bit. The finish has some serious defects in it that aren't just taking a standard polish. So because of the condition of the paint, this is going to take us a few more steps to actually get right. We're talking about compounding. Compounding a car is a process that we do in order to be able to level or remove defects in paint surfaces. We're going to be doing that with a machine so that we can make sure that it's clean and efficiently leveled. And that's how we're going to start bringing this finish back to life. Polishing the Maverick is taking a lot longer than expected, so we're probably gonna have to stay overnight and get as far as we can just so we can get to the interior tomorrow. I'm about to get turned. We worked late into the night to finish this polish. From when Teresa dropped off the car until now, it's a night and day difference. All we have to do is scrub the interior, including the carpets, put a couple little final touches on there, and wait for Teresa to pick up the car. I really hope that the vehicle looks the way that she remembers it. Maybe even a little better. So are you ready to see this thing? I am. I think you're gonna be pleased. It looks amazing. It's better than I expected it to be. So you remember algae, mold, you name it, was bonded to this thing. So we went over this multiple different times. And then once we finally got to find the paint, we've got the finish that you're looking at now. I want you to check out the interior. Just kind of try to take it all in. You'll notice that the carpet's a little bit more vibrant. Seats are clean. Very nice. We went over your headliner, carpets, all the cracks and crevices. The little chrome trim went out and got all the mold off the steering wheel. The built-up crud and debris and whatnot out of all the jams. It looks great. I'm glad you're happy. I couldn't have done that. That's why you got us. When Teresa dropped off the Maverick, she might have gotten $5,000 at best for this car. Now that she's picked it up, she can get well over $10,000. Attached with the memory of it, this vehicle is priceless. We've added at least $5,000 value in just two days. It looks great. Looking at the pictures last night, I was just devastated. My father, he would be happy. Thank you. It looks wonderful. It looks great. Very glad you're happy. The story really just resonated with both of us. It's not what you do for yourself, but what you do for others that echoes through a turn. I think Teresa got a really pleasant surprise and she also got a little emotional. You could tell that her seeing the finish on the vehicle restored to the way that she remembered it or even better, really evoked a lot of emotion and memory that was attached to that car. That essentially means we did our job. We did a good thing. Real good.