This car had never been detailed. it was about a year old, it has been taken to the car wash for a wax every so often, but this time the owner wanted PERFECTION. and thats just what he got. this car needed wetsanding in some places, and a full 3-step polish. as far as he paint goes, it was in pretty bad shape...

Exterior

-Wash
-P21s TAW Pre-soak
-CG CWG
-CG Waterspot Remover
-White/yellow shMITT

-Engine
-Meguiar's Super Degreaser
-Meguiar's Hyper Dressing

-Wheels
-CG Citrus wheel cleaner
-Meguiar's Wheel brightener
-CG CWG
-EZ detail Brush
-Black shMITT
-Amazing Roll-off (tires)
-Swissvax Autobahn

-Wheel Wells
-Simple Green
-black shMITT
-Meguiar's Hyper Dressing

-Clay
-CG Gray clay
-CG Synthetic QD for lube

-Correction
-2000 grit (3M wet-or-dry) sanding paper
-Menzerna Powergloss
-Menzerna SIP
-Menzerna PO85RD
-LC Foamed Wool
-LC yellow compounding pad
-LC orange pad
-LC white pad
-Sonus SFX white pad
-Sonus SFX blue finishing pad
-Makita 9227C
-3M yellow backing plate
-Edge foam pad cleaner
-ISA wipedown

-LSP
-Collinite 915
-FK1# 425

Interior

-CG leather Cleaner
-CG lightning fast
-1Z cockpit Premium
-1Z Gummi Pflege
-Zaino Z10
-303 protectant
-Stoner's Invisible Glass


Well to start, i arrived at fire station #4 (again!) at 7:00AM. i took a quick look at the car and i told the owner that it didn't look like it was in too bad of shape, except for some big scratches, which i was told to remove. first off i decided it would be better to degrease the engine before moving on the the paint, so that i would not dirty the paint.














Letting Meguiar's Super Degreaser soak in. then i gave the heavily soiled areas a scrub, then rinsed off.





now it's time for the wash. using the two-bucket method with grit guards. i first washed the wheels, then the car. after the wash i clayed the entire car using CG's Gray clay since this car had never been clayed in the past.




















after the wash and clay




















CG's Citrus wah n gloss sure does leave a nice looking shine! but don't be fooled! now onto the halogen lights!
































well that paint was in pretty bad shape... so i decided to try a test panel using SIP on a orange pad.







it got most of the defects out of that panel. so i decided to go on with that combination. i moved onto the hood.








now that didn't seem to do much as far as taking care of the RIDS... so i decided to bump it up a notch to Menzerna Power Gloss on a Purple Foamed Wool Pad.




still left some RIDS...






after 1 pass with Power Gloss




after 2 passes






so at this point i had to resort to sanding using 2000 grit paper in order to get rid of the RIDS







and after powergloss of the same panel

 

the center of the hood






1 pass wasnt enough....


did anyone say powergloss isn't dusty?




more before and after shots





















these scratches were caused by a luggage cart from a hotel running into the car. they had to be sanded out. some small parts of it had unfortunately gone too deep...






after powergloss



after SIP












and that was the end of day 1. i left at 11:00PM.

the next morning i arrived back at the station and got started again at around 8:30AM. i re-washed the car because it sat outside at night and got rained on. then i went back to polish the whole car (including the roof) over with SIP on the white sonus SFX pad because my CCS pads were acting up for some reason. i think it had to do with the "sticky clear coat" issue.

SIP finished down pretty well on the hood with the sonus SFX white polishing pad.




now for the final result of 2 hard days of polishing. these shots are after polishing with PO85RD on the blue sonus pad and given a ISA wipedown

 

50/50 of Black WOW





after LSP
















that marked the end of day 2. i have another job at a restaurant that i had to be there at 7:00PM, so i left the station around 6.


Day 3 was at the owner's house. this was just to do the interior. i started out with cleaning the carpets with CG's Lightning fast stain remover.







extracted water...





the doors, steering wheel and seats were full of body grease and makeup (it's a woman who drives the car)










so i gave the leather a good cleaning with CG's leather cleaner, the plastic and LCD screens with 1Z cockpit, and then applied 303 protectant to the dashboard, and Zaino Z10 to the leather seats. then i applied 1Z gummi pflege to the weather seals. then cleaned the glass using stoner's Invisible Glass












and to finish it off i cleaned off the door jams with FK1 # 425







well i hope you all enjoyed looking at that! it took a lot of hard work to get that shine out of the paint!

thanks for looking!!!

 

Amazing work! Few questions:

1. How were the pads acting up? How do you feel about the sonus pads? I was recommended to them but have yet to try them myself.

2. How did you go about polishing the roof? I'm having issues with being able to get the right angles on roofs in order to polish them out correctly.

3. How do you get such good halogen shots?! Mine always suck and don't show nearly any imperfections like the sun does.. (I'm using 500w, do I need to go to 1000w?)

Again, just stunning work!

 

BEAUTIFUL work man! You did a great job on this one! looks like you got the whole fire department on lockdown! haha! Dont you love when that happens??

 

awesome work! hope you showed the owner a few before and after shots so she knows exactly what she paid for!

great work and that blackwow looks great! interior i think is where the magic happens. no matter how bad paint is, with enough time and the right supplies it can be fixed up enough to look AT LEAST near new. but with a super clean interior, the car is really reborn. your shots of the seats, steering wheel, and dash are, in my opinion, what really set this job over the top in quality. great job man.

+1 to the power gloss being dusty!!

 

thanks!

1- on some panels the pads would seem to stick. this is known as the "sticky clear coat" issue. the CCS pads would tend to skip around and not really finish down well, and would make the paint scorching hot. the sonus pads helped, but it was still a slight problem.

2- i didn't really polish the roof to perfection... no point in doing so, who sees the roof? i just polished it with the SIP to get it to shine again because it was pretty dull and had a lot of acid rain etching.


3 i have a 1000w setup. but i also have a DSLR camera. i think that makes the most of the difference. for the halogen shots i usually set the exposure to +.5 so the swirls come up more.

 

haha thanks! who wouldn't love to have a whole bunch of customers in one area??

 

yea, even though the interior wasn't in real bad shape, the seats had never been conditioned, etc... so they were rock hard. after i put on the z10 i came back a while later and they were so soft!

 

nice work!