First wash in 40 years: Detailing our Barn Find Chevy with Larry from Ammo NYC | Redline Update - Hagerty Media

Davin is an expert at a lot of things, but detailing is not one of them. That might explain the lack of shine to a lot of the project cars in the Redline Rebuild Garage. The 1950 Chevrolet pickup is a prime example. It has received a lot of mechanical love over the past year, but very little in the way of cosmetics. We read your comments, and Davin decided to give the whole polishing thing a try. Not being an expert, however, the first step was calling for help. That’s where Larry Kosilla of Ammo NYC comes in.

Larry has made a living detailing cars that have lived hard lives, often years of neglect and bad storage. His expertise has turned many cars from crusty, dusty messes into show-ready pieces of art. He is certainly the man to help Davin put a shine on the Redline Rebuild Chevy pickup.

Larry and Davin talk through the process and reasoning behind the approach Larry takes to cars like this one. At the core: paint technology has evolved significantly over time, and that means you really need to know what you are dealing with in order to bring it back to life instead of destroying it. The Chevrolet appears to be wearing original paint from 1950, meaning the color coat is also the top coat of paint. There is no clear coat or protective layer, so getting too aggressive with polishing compound will burn right through to primer and metal. Already there are patches of metal popping through on this pickup, but Davin wants more shine, not more metal.

With a heavy dose of polishing compound and elbow grease, the green paint of the pickup comes back to life. Of course, there are sections where no amount of polishing is going to bring it back to showroom shine, but considering the life that this truck led prior to being towed to the Redline Rebuild Garage, it cleans up mighty nice. There are still projects on the to-do list for this truck, and if you want to see what’s next, be sure to subscribe to the Hagerty YouTube channel to get notifications with each update that goes live.