20-12-2009, 01:52 PM
It's been a while since I have contributed to the Show & Shine outpost but work amongst other things has been keeping me tied up. Thankfully now that I am on leave I can catch up on a few things
Righty then, this particular car came to me after the owner was unsatisfied with the condition it was delivered in. It was booked in for a 2 day paint correction detail which was completed in a little over 19 hours or so.
First up, some pics of the vehicle as it arrived...
Bug guts all over the front end
Front grille would be interesting to clean up
Exhaust all carbon'd up
Small stone stuck between the bumper and rear lights
Some muck in all the cracks and crevices
Wheels were filthy as well
With the intial inspection over it was time to get the car washed up and cleaned. First as usual was the wheels which were seen to with Sonax Xtreme rim cleaner and various brushes...
Sonax doing it's thing
Ez-Detail brush in action. I find I usually turn to the Ez before going for the Daytona. I think the more densely packed bristles are better suited for more soiled wheels IMO
Caliper and lug nuts cleaned with MI detail brushes
With the wheels and arches sorted I set about rinsing the car thoroughly before cleaning all the panel gaps, emblems, etc with 5:1 APC.
Trim & panel gaps
Front grille was scrubbed 3 times with APC to try and shift some of the calcium deposits
With all the small details cleaned the vehicle was re-rinsed and washed using the 2BM before being clayed and dried.
Clay came up pretty clean which was surprising
With the vehicle clean and dry I could now properly inspect the paintwork to see what we were dealing with...
Lots of light swirling and marring
Having seen the paint defects out in the sunlight I moved the car inside to take a closer look under the halogens before getting started on the paint correction stage...
Overall the paintwork was in quite a sorry state considering the vehicle was only a few months old. Just goes to show the level of damage that can be caused through poor washing techniques
I taped up a small test section on the bonnet to try and find a suitable combo for this one. Needless to say this car had some nasty sticky paint and I wound up shredding a nearly new 3M compounding pad along with a 3M polishing pad. At the end of the day I settled on a combo of FA + FCP for the more deeply swirled bits, with FA & SIP being used on the remainder of the vehicle.
Before
50/50
And after
Center of the bonnet corrected with the 50/50 section in the top half of the photo
Paintwork nicely cleaned up and swirl free
Flake coming back to life
Some random shots from around the car
Mirror before
And after
A-Pillar before
And after
Rear fender before
After
Rear C-Pillar before
After
With the paintwork corrected I got stuck into the plastic B-pillars...Let's just say they were trashed!
Due the condition these were in I opted to hit them with FCP before refining with SIP and finally FA
Afters
With all the correction completed I rewashed the car to remove all the polishing dust before tackling all the smaller details.
Exhausts were cleaned up and shined
Missus gave me a hand with the front grille (small fingers FTW). Overall it came up pretty well IMO
LSP for the day (iirc) was Poor-Boys EX sealant topped with a layer of Pete's 53 for some added protection. Trim got 303 Aerospace, tires got Meg's Endurance Gel and windows were cleaned with AG Fast Glass.
Some afters
Some reflection shots
Final one
As always thanks for looking
Righty then, this particular car came to me after the owner was unsatisfied with the condition it was delivered in. It was booked in for a 2 day paint correction detail which was completed in a little over 19 hours or so.
First up, some pics of the vehicle as it arrived...
Bug guts all over the front end
Front grille would be interesting to clean up
Exhaust all carbon'd up
Small stone stuck between the bumper and rear lights
Some muck in all the cracks and crevices
Wheels were filthy as well
With the intial inspection over it was time to get the car washed up and cleaned. First as usual was the wheels which were seen to with Sonax Xtreme rim cleaner and various brushes...
Sonax doing it's thing
Ez-Detail brush in action. I find I usually turn to the Ez before going for the Daytona. I think the more densely packed bristles are better suited for more soiled wheels IMO
Caliper and lug nuts cleaned with MI detail brushes
With the wheels and arches sorted I set about rinsing the car thoroughly before cleaning all the panel gaps, emblems, etc with 5:1 APC.
Trim & panel gaps
Front grille was scrubbed 3 times with APC to try and shift some of the calcium deposits
With all the small details cleaned the vehicle was re-rinsed and washed using the 2BM before being clayed and dried.
Clay came up pretty clean which was surprising
With the vehicle clean and dry I could now properly inspect the paintwork to see what we were dealing with...
Lots of light swirling and marring
Having seen the paint defects out in the sunlight I moved the car inside to take a closer look under the halogens before getting started on the paint correction stage...
Overall the paintwork was in quite a sorry state considering the vehicle was only a few months old. Just goes to show the level of damage that can be caused through poor washing techniques
I taped up a small test section on the bonnet to try and find a suitable combo for this one. Needless to say this car had some nasty sticky paint and I wound up shredding a nearly new 3M compounding pad along with a 3M polishing pad. At the end of the day I settled on a combo of FA + FCP for the more deeply swirled bits, with FA & SIP being used on the remainder of the vehicle.
Before
50/50
And after
Center of the bonnet corrected with the 50/50 section in the top half of the photo
Paintwork nicely cleaned up and swirl free
Flake coming back to life
Some random shots from around the car
Mirror before
And after
A-Pillar before
And after
Rear fender before
After
Rear C-Pillar before
After
With the paintwork corrected I got stuck into the plastic B-pillars...Let's just say they were trashed!
Due the condition these were in I opted to hit them with FCP before refining with SIP and finally FA
Afters
With all the correction completed I rewashed the car to remove all the polishing dust before tackling all the smaller details.
Exhausts were cleaned up and shined
Missus gave me a hand with the front grille (small fingers FTW). Overall it came up pretty well IMO
LSP for the day (iirc) was Poor-Boys EX sealant topped with a layer of Pete's 53 for some added protection. Trim got 303 Aerospace, tires got Meg's Endurance Gel and windows were cleaned with AG Fast Glass.
Some afters
Some reflection shots
Final one
As always thanks for looking