Hey, Mike Phillips here, Dr. Beasley’s training center in sunny Stuart, Florida. This is where we teach all of our car and boat detailing classes in Florida. And what I’m working on here today is a 1981 DeLorean with only 180 miles on it. So, it’s basically like a factory new car.
The problem is this is normally on display at the American Muscle Car Museum. And they say they really struggle with getting a uniform look to the stainless steel because it has this grain to it, a grain pattern to how the stainless steel was formed. And then also avoiding things like fingerprints. Anytime somebody touches it, like to move the car, open the door, they leave fingerprints behind.
Finding a Safe Method for Stainless Steel Grain
So I’m going to machine polish this out with the NSP45. And after doing some testing, I found this actually created a very nice, uniform, matte stainless steel finish. And this is important because what I’ve discovered with stainless steel is that, kind of like matte paint, if you rub too hard in one spot or do some sort of irregular pattern, you can actually alter the way it looks and then you got to try to figure out how to fix it.
So, after doing some testing with short-stroke, medium-stroke, and long-stroke polishers, I found the large orbit stroke of the 21-millimeter BigFoot with this big old—this is a black Buff and Shine soft foam finishing pad—on speed 4 using a cross-hatch pattern. It actually left a brighter-looking finish while staying matte, and you can see the grain, but it’s a very safe way to polish it, remove the oxidation, and get it ready for the coating.
Why NSP Primers and Nano Gel Matter
Now, all of the Dr. Beasley’s NSP primers use for their carrying agent what we call the Dr. Beasley’s nano gel. Here’s some right here. It’s water-based, completely safe. I don’t have to put gloves on to touch this stuff. So, instead of using the traditional petroleum and mineral oils found in most compounds and polishes that then you have to come back with the panel wipe and strip off before you can put the ceramic coating on, with ours, you can go right to the coating.
So, after I finish this and then come back and wipe off all the residue, then I’m going to come back without doing a panel wipe and I’m going to go right to our brand new Dr. Beasley’s Metal Coat Pro. This is a ceramic coating for uncoated metals. Okay? And in this case, I’m working on stainless steel. There’s no clear coat on here. It’s just bare metal.
Coating Plan and Next Steps
So, anyway, let me finish this out because I know watching somebody machine polish a car is like watching paint dry. So let me finish this out. I’ll come back and I’ll go over the process to apply the ceramic coating. And then I’ll do a walkaround video. And then tomorrow morning when it’s nice and cool out, I’m going to take this outside and the coating’s cured—actually do it next week after the coating’s cured for a few days—and I’m going to spray with water so you can see the self-cleaning effect this coating leaves behind by creating a hydrophobic surface. So stay tuned.
So, I finished polishing all the stainless steel body panels using the BigFoot 21 with NSP45 on a black foam finishing pad. So, now it’s time to apply the Dr. Beasley’s Metal Coat Pro.
Applying Metal Coat Pro: Cross-Hatch With the Grain
And you apply this just like most coatings, the conventional way using a cross-hatch pattern. I would say because this has a linear grain to it, you really do want to kind of massage it in the direction of the grain because what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to fill all the pores and what are called interstices. Interstices are microscopic cracks and fissures.
And, anyway, the whole idea is just trying to seal the surface, prevent tarnish, oxidation. Even though it’s stainless steel, a lot of it is iron or steel. So, it can still rust. And then by sealing this finish, you will also make it easier to clean moving forward. You know, whether you’re washing it—this car won’t sit outside—but if it were to sit outside and it were to rain, it would self-clean.
Reducing Fingerprints and Brightening the Finish
But the big problem they have with this when it’s on display at the museum is, just through normal maintenance, you know, wiping it down, dusting it, you get fingerprints on it, and the fingerprints kind of soak into the stainless steel. So with this coating on here, the hope is that that’ll reduce the problem with fingerprints, but also just make it look bright and beautiful.
Anyway, that’s the new Dr. Beasley’s Metal Coat Pro. As you saw, I just applied it using a cross-hatch pattern, waited about 30–45 seconds, used some microfiber towels to level it and wipe it off. I’m going to continue working around the car. Then I’ll come back and do a walkaround, show you the final results, and then after a couple days go by, we’ll show you the water beading characteristics of this product.
Walkaround: Wash, Polish, and Coat
This is my walkaround video. So, I’m done detailing this 1981 DeLorean. So, let me just kind of share with you what I did to it. First, it just got a good car wash. I used the foam gun, pH-neutral car wash soap, just to get all the surface dirt and fingerprints and things like that off of it.
And then I did something different. I went ahead and machine polished it using the Dr. Beasley’s NSP45. If you’re not familiar with the Dr. Beasley’s NSP primers, the 45 is like an ultra-fine cut polish. So the idea was I wanted to brighten the stainless steel, but I didn’t want to, like, make it shiny like chrome. Wanted to keep this natural. It has a grain. So the grain runs the direction of the length of the body.
Final Protection and Why the System Works
So I machine polished it and then I applied our brand new Dr. Beasley’s Metal Coat Pro. Okay, so here’s the Metal Coat Pro. Now this is 100% solid, so it’s a little bit on the thick side, but it still applies and wipes off like any other coating. And the goal, of course, with something like this stainless steel is to seal the porosity of the stainless steel and also create a very hard shell kind of surface that’ll resist fingerprints moving forward because that’s one of the biggest problems they have.
This is on display at the American Muscle Car Museum and, just through normal maintenance—dusting, wiping it down—it gets a lot of fingerprints. So that’s one of the reasons we coated it.
To do the machine polishing, I used the Dr. Beasley’s NSP45. This is like a fine cut polish. We call it a primer. We call it a primer because instead of using petroleum oils, mineral oils for a carrying agent, it uses our nano gel, and this creates a base layer of water-based ceramic which enables the coating to actually bond for a more durable bond or protection.
Tools, Specs, and a Bit of History
I did all the machine polishing with the BigFoot 21 using a soft foam finishing pad. Here’s the original sales flyer for this car. If you look down here, it’s 1981. Suggested retail price was $25,000. Let’s see. Out the door, it went up to $26,175 after a couple of add-ons.
Anyway, there she is. 1981 DeLorean, ready to go back to the American Muscle Car Museum. If you ever get up there, it’s an incredible collection. But be sure to look for this and remember that it was polished and protected with Dr. Beasley’s.
Mike and Ed Discuss the Detailed Work on the 1981 DeLorean
Ed: Hello, Mike.
Mike: Hey, Ed. How you doing?
Ed: Good. Car is looking good. Wow.
Mike: What do you think?
Ed: I love the crispness of it. It has just a clean look. It doesn’t look like a refrigerator with a bunch of handprints on it.
Mike: You know, it’s actually a little brighter now. So, let me tell you what I did. I know this thing—you actually have the original DeLorean stainless steel detail kit, where you kind of rub these things down with what looks like Scotch-Brite and oil.
Ed: Yes.
Mike: But what I did is I actually lightly machine polished it.
Removing Oxidation and Avoiding the Mirror Effect
Mike: And what that did is it kind of removed some of the oxidation, some of the rust formation that naturally occurs on stainless steel over time. And to do that, I kept it really simple because I didn’t want to turn this into a mirror.
Ed: It doesn’t have that kind of yellow or gold haze. It has more of a silver haze to it.
Mike: Yeah, exactly. The coating made it very bright. But yeah, what happens with Cybertrucks and cars like this is even though stainless steel is thought of as a metal that does not rust, it does get light rust formation, and that gives things kind of a yellow or an orange tinge to it. So I removed that.
Explaining the Products and Process
Mike: But let me show you what I did real quick. Walk over here. I actually machine polished this with our NSP45. And the reason why is because it’s a fine cut cleaner, because I didn’t want to turn this into a mirror. I just wanted to brighten it up and remove that tarnish and that rust formation tinge.
And because this is a nano gel product, I was able to go right to our Dr. Beasley’s Metal Coat Pro.
Ed: Now, what did you use for a foam pad, I take it?
Mike: Yeah, right here. This actually came in real handy. This is the Rupes cordless BigFoot 15.
Ed: Okay.
Mike: And I chose the 15 because it’s got a big orbit stroke because I didn’t want to leave any patterns in the stainless steel.
Detailing Technique and Prep Work
Ed: How many passes did it take on this?
Mike: I did like a normal eight-section pass to each section of the car. And one thing—if anybody ever wants to detail one of these—if you look over here, this has the cursed pebble texture plastic. So I taped all this off. So not only would I not get polish into it, but I wouldn’t get any coating and alter the way it looks.
Ed: Excellent.
Mike: So yeah, she’s ready to go back to the American Muscle Car Museum. But tell you what I want to do. I know this thing goes out for service like once a year, right?
Ed: Once, once a year.
Museum Service Routine
Ed: What we try to do is we try to do a minor service every year, and we do a major service every five years.
Mike: Okay.
Ed: And what I mean by that is a minor might be we bring it in, we run the car, check for leaks, make a hit list, polish it up, and then every five years we flush all the fluids—meaning brake fluid, transmission, gearbox fluid, fresh fuel, fresh gas—and then anything we might have, you know, a door handle acting up, a headlight that’s out or something like that, or a door that needs adjusting.
My question for you is, you did it with the 45, and then you went to which coating?
Mike: Oh, the brand new Dr. Beasley’s Metal Coat Pro for uncoated metal. Yeah, this is brand new. So, it was kind of—I did this and a Cybertruck at the same time, and I used two different processes, but they both came out spectacular.
Demonstrating the Hydrophobic Properties
Mike: In fact, let’s do this. Let’s move the car forward up here. I’ve got a water hose, and I want to show you the water beading characteristics because I know you don’t wash these often, but if you ever do, it’s going to wash fast. It’s going to wash safer. It’s going to dry fast. And you should be able to avoid any water spot issues.
So let’s go ahead and pull this forward, and I’ll show that to you. Spray the front clip here down with some water. I want you to see what the water beading action looks like.
Ed: Look at that. You know how fast and easy this will be to wash into the future? That’s impressive. I like it.
Mike: Yeah. It’s just—it’s hydrophobic. Our new Metal Coat Pro is a hydrophobic ceramic coating. And not only is it going to seal this stainless steel, but more important to you is it should help with the fingerprint issue.
Just like Cybertrucks have—you touch them, it leaves a fingerprint. If you touch this ceramic coating now, you will still see a fingerprint, but the difference is it’ll wipe off real easy with a microfiber towel.
Why Coatings Are Important for Display Cars
Ed: Well, you bring up an excellent point. In the museum, you mean you think the cars—hey, they never see any wear and tear?
Mike: Yeah.
Ed: Absolutely, they do. Because, you know, we have a rotation. We go through, we wipe all the cars down. So, in a sense, we could possibly be micro-scratching or leaving fingerprints. So, to have a protective coating on each vehicle is huge for us.
Mike: That was big. Get out of your way. Yeah. Watch this.
Wrapping Up the Detail
Mike: There you go. 1981 DeLorean with only 180 miles, machine polished and protected with Dr. Beasley’s. To get more information, just go to drbeasleys.com.
Thanks, Ed, for letting us borrow this for this little video. For me, it was the first time I’ve ever machine polished a DeLorean, and I’ll take a guess it’s probably going to be my last.
Ed: Well, thanks again. And I mean, the results speak for themselves.
Mike: Okay, hey, let’s get this loaded up back to the museum.
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