richy
04-13-2011, 03:25 PM
I was very excited to do this car. I had heard that the paint was soft so I recommended that the owner have me protect it with Opti Coat. I was also looking forward to trying a few new products (UTTG and CG flexible bp and B & S pads) as well as a new method for wet sanding. Lots of neat things to try on my first detail of the season.
The owner is a multiple repeat customer. He had hired me to do the paint only. The car is a 2009 with around 8500 miles on it. It had lots of little scratches as well as a few bigger ones and several chips. I got some touch up paint from our local paint supply shop. I arranged to have the car for over a week to work on it.
I shot some pics of the interior too. It was OK, but the carpets needed shampooing and the seats looked like alcantara so I figured I'd clean them up for him too using my Gaia steamer.
After getting the car here, we discussed taking the wheels off and protecting them too with OC.
First up was the door jams. They were sprayed with Zep citrus and agitated with a mini Daytona wheel brush. They were then sprayed down with a pressurized sprayer containing ONR. They were then dried by hand.
Following that was the engine. There is a cover underneath the engine compartment so the usual power washer method was not an option. Everything was cleaned with Zep Citrus if needed or ONR. The engine was dressed with PERL and the plastic panels were treated with UTTG. I really dropped the ball on pics and did not take any of the finished product.
Next up was to clean the wheels and tires from the outside. I did not take too long doing this as I knew I'd be doing it in more detail in a few days. I used Zep Citrus on the wheels and Zep Purple on the tires. There is very little room to get into the wells so I did not do that at the time.
http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t12/rhowitt/Live2Detail/DSC_0156.jpg
http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t12/rhowitt/Live2Detail/DSC_0157.jpg
The car was then washed with DG 901 with a 2bm. I pulled the car into the garage wet and proceeded to clay it with CM blue. There was surprisingly little contamination on it. Each panel was dried after being clayed.
were 150 microns.
The winning combo ended up being a yellow B & S pad with M105 and a blue B & S pad with M205. I tried refining it further using 85rd but no noticeable difference was detected. It was looking absolutely gorgeous. This paint was so soft, and so easy to correct that I could chase every tiny scratch and attain perfection. I really worked both products for a long time at low speeds. It really did the trick! The CG flexible backing plate was a joy to work with. Thanks so much Dave for bringing that to my attention!
Scratch repair:
There were 2 scratches that needed more than compounding. I wanted to try something that I had posted about a while ago and received mixed reviews, namely, using a MAGIC ERASER as a wet sand tool. I tried it by wetting it thoroughly and rubbing it gently across the scratch. I found it to be a very gentle abrasion. In fact it was not doing much so I switched to 2500 paper. Even that took some work but I did not want to go too aggressive. Once I leveled it sufficiently, I went back over it with the ME. I used a 4" pfw pad to take out the sand marks. Here are pics of the scratch and the ME abrasion:
Next step was trying different combos of pad and polish to see what would remove the scratches in the least aggressive way and give me the finish I wanted. The complication? Readings as low as 78 microns in some areas. The highest readings
The owner is a multiple repeat customer. He had hired me to do the paint only. The car is a 2009 with around 8500 miles on it. It had lots of little scratches as well as a few bigger ones and several chips. I got some touch up paint from our local paint supply shop. I arranged to have the car for over a week to work on it.
I shot some pics of the interior too. It was OK, but the carpets needed shampooing and the seats looked like alcantara so I figured I'd clean them up for him too using my Gaia steamer.
After getting the car here, we discussed taking the wheels off and protecting them too with OC.
First up was the door jams. They were sprayed with Zep citrus and agitated with a mini Daytona wheel brush. They were then sprayed down with a pressurized sprayer containing ONR. They were then dried by hand.
Following that was the engine. There is a cover underneath the engine compartment so the usual power washer method was not an option. Everything was cleaned with Zep Citrus if needed or ONR. The engine was dressed with PERL and the plastic panels were treated with UTTG. I really dropped the ball on pics and did not take any of the finished product.
Next up was to clean the wheels and tires from the outside. I did not take too long doing this as I knew I'd be doing it in more detail in a few days. I used Zep Citrus on the wheels and Zep Purple on the tires. There is very little room to get into the wells so I did not do that at the time.
http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t12/rhowitt/Live2Detail/DSC_0156.jpg
http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t12/rhowitt/Live2Detail/DSC_0157.jpg
The car was then washed with DG 901 with a 2bm. I pulled the car into the garage wet and proceeded to clay it with CM blue. There was surprisingly little contamination on it. Each panel was dried after being clayed.
were 150 microns.
The winning combo ended up being a yellow B & S pad with M105 and a blue B & S pad with M205. I tried refining it further using 85rd but no noticeable difference was detected. It was looking absolutely gorgeous. This paint was so soft, and so easy to correct that I could chase every tiny scratch and attain perfection. I really worked both products for a long time at low speeds. It really did the trick! The CG flexible backing plate was a joy to work with. Thanks so much Dave for bringing that to my attention!
Scratch repair:
There were 2 scratches that needed more than compounding. I wanted to try something that I had posted about a while ago and received mixed reviews, namely, using a MAGIC ERASER as a wet sand tool. I tried it by wetting it thoroughly and rubbing it gently across the scratch. I found it to be a very gentle abrasion. In fact it was not doing much so I switched to 2500 paper. Even that took some work but I did not want to go too aggressive. Once I leveled it sufficiently, I went back over it with the ME. I used a 4" pfw pad to take out the sand marks. Here are pics of the scratch and the ME abrasion:
Next step was trying different combos of pad and polish to see what would remove the scratches in the least aggressive way and give me the finish I wanted. The complication? Readings as low as 78 microns in some areas. The highest readings