MirrorFinish
09-03-2011, 04:39 PM
Booked in for a correction detial is this lovely 59 plate VW transporter van in a lovely blue. Don't know if you have this van in the US; it is a common van here in England.
Owned by a member on here, sorry Tony forgot your user name. Who is super proud of his van, which unfortunaly was let down by it's previous life of being washed by a yard brush.
I viewed the vehicle a few weeks ago and reported back and a deal was done. The whole of the botton half was just marred with horizontal scratches in the clear and the top half was mainly swirl marks.
The van was dropped off with me on Sunday evening, about 9pm as there was nothing on the telly I decided to go and wash her. I applied Tardis all over the bottom first then rinsed off after 5 mins. I used my usual method of heavy foam, power rinse off then re foam and then wash. I then leave the vehicle wet and clay. Took over a bar of clay to clay her, I had the halogens out in the end as I did not finish claying her till after 11pm. So after a long day as I did the training course on Sunday I had a wee dram and off to bed.
Officially Day 1.
No rain over night so just dusted her off with the california duster. As I have recently corrected a few Golf's and BMW's quite successfully with just a yellow 3M pad and FastCut I though I would try this. This did not even tickle the finish, so up to 3M green pad and FastCut, again nothing. Tried Power Gloss with the green pad and again nothing. Broke out the wool pads with both polishes and again nothing, no correction. Starting to think by now this van is fighting me.
Even where I took paint readings nothing was removed, head scratch time. Thpough about wet sanding but you can't just wet sand a few lower panels and not the whole van and wet sanding would have took two days, I only had it for 3 days. By now it was 11am and I had been trying different combos for nearlly 3 hours, it was one of those days where I could have just thrown the rotary at the van and gone and played golf.
Phone a friend time. pal of mine runs a body shop and I shot down for a coffee. Explained the problem. He has come across this before that some of the commercial vehicles use a special clear that is super hard and applied quite thinly. Mainly to cope with the demands of being a van. He sent me home with a bottle of G3 and a body shop mop, to use only wet.
Half way through the day now, I start wet compounding with G3 and a big 10" body shop mop. Water all over the place, polish all over the side of the house and my car. It did work though and apart from the mess the correction was pretty good and no heat in the panels either. In the end was pretty easy to clear up the mess.
So onto a few pics.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5584.jpg
Top panels not as bad.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5586.jpg
After G3 mopping.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5587.jpg
After 3M Fast Cut on wool pad trying to remove G3 marks.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5587.jpg
After 3M Extrafine on a yellow 3M pad.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5589.jpg
After a stressfull day this was the finish on the only panels I got finished, this is before refining.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5593.jpg
Bonnet after compounding, cutting and polishing.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5599.jpg
Metallic flake now popping.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5600.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5601.jpg
After dinner I decided to attack the wheels. The four on the van were the summer rims so just a spray with brake duster left to sit for 20 mins then a power wash off and a qucik go over with some brushes. I also cleaned the winter wheels that were in the back, they took two hits with brake duster and aggressive clay to clean then, no pics as I did them in the rain.
Plus arches scrubbed.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5603.jpg
Wheels came up really clean and the summer wheels were painted and cleared on the rears. gave them all two coats of Opti Seal both back and fronts.
Day Two
As i had to press on as I had the drivers side to do, back doors and half the bonnet not many pics were taken.
My mate who runs the body shop popped round to see how I was getting on. He was interested in the paint removal from yesterday. He got his all singing paint gauge out that reads layers and set about the van, then I calibrated my gauge and did the same readings, the gauges were out by about 1um. He then used both machines to look at the base paint on areas he knew had no clear, mainly in the engine bay and load area, he then worked out the paint removal to be 9um based on an average of both machines with the cheaper paint detective be as accuarte as his computer based machine. he could read the bumpers though that were all healthy. So the readings were on average 55um un clear and 110um cleared, pretty thin really. After day one the readings were averaging 102um on the corrected side.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5609.jpg
Whole van was refined with 3M Ultrafina and blue pad with the rotary, then changed to the DA to final finish.
After nearlly 23 hours now these are some finished reflection pics before LSP applied.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5613.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5619.jpg
The badge had a fair bit of polish in it.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5621.jpg
Cleaned with IPA and Wolf trim guard, not perfect but an improvement.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5622.jpg
Wheels Finished.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5623.jpg
LSP for the van is two coats of Opti Seal applied and left to cure for 30 minutes. Then waxed with Swissvax Best Of Show given an hour to cure. Then a quick wipe down with Chemical Guys V7 to remove the dust that had settled on it.
Finished Pictures.....enjoy!!!!
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5634.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5635.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5636.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5637.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5639.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5640.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5641.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5642.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5646.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5648.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5649.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5650.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5651.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5652.jpg
Day Three
Just went over the van with a fine tooth comb, cleaned out all the door shuts and made sure it was ready for Tony to pick up.
All in all a fantastic machine to work on, even if a bit frustrating.
I would have like to have got some of the deeper marks out, but as the paint was so hard and pretty thin some of them had to stay.
Hope you all enjoy reading. 32 hours all in all, phew. I think the customer was happy as well!!!!
Steve :car:
Owned by a member on here, sorry Tony forgot your user name. Who is super proud of his van, which unfortunaly was let down by it's previous life of being washed by a yard brush.
I viewed the vehicle a few weeks ago and reported back and a deal was done. The whole of the botton half was just marred with horizontal scratches in the clear and the top half was mainly swirl marks.
The van was dropped off with me on Sunday evening, about 9pm as there was nothing on the telly I decided to go and wash her. I applied Tardis all over the bottom first then rinsed off after 5 mins. I used my usual method of heavy foam, power rinse off then re foam and then wash. I then leave the vehicle wet and clay. Took over a bar of clay to clay her, I had the halogens out in the end as I did not finish claying her till after 11pm. So after a long day as I did the training course on Sunday I had a wee dram and off to bed.
Officially Day 1.
No rain over night so just dusted her off with the california duster. As I have recently corrected a few Golf's and BMW's quite successfully with just a yellow 3M pad and FastCut I though I would try this. This did not even tickle the finish, so up to 3M green pad and FastCut, again nothing. Tried Power Gloss with the green pad and again nothing. Broke out the wool pads with both polishes and again nothing, no correction. Starting to think by now this van is fighting me.
Even where I took paint readings nothing was removed, head scratch time. Thpough about wet sanding but you can't just wet sand a few lower panels and not the whole van and wet sanding would have took two days, I only had it for 3 days. By now it was 11am and I had been trying different combos for nearlly 3 hours, it was one of those days where I could have just thrown the rotary at the van and gone and played golf.
Phone a friend time. pal of mine runs a body shop and I shot down for a coffee. Explained the problem. He has come across this before that some of the commercial vehicles use a special clear that is super hard and applied quite thinly. Mainly to cope with the demands of being a van. He sent me home with a bottle of G3 and a body shop mop, to use only wet.
Half way through the day now, I start wet compounding with G3 and a big 10" body shop mop. Water all over the place, polish all over the side of the house and my car. It did work though and apart from the mess the correction was pretty good and no heat in the panels either. In the end was pretty easy to clear up the mess.
So onto a few pics.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5584.jpg
Top panels not as bad.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5586.jpg
After G3 mopping.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5587.jpg
After 3M Fast Cut on wool pad trying to remove G3 marks.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5587.jpg
After 3M Extrafine on a yellow 3M pad.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5589.jpg
After a stressfull day this was the finish on the only panels I got finished, this is before refining.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5593.jpg
Bonnet after compounding, cutting and polishing.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5599.jpg
Metallic flake now popping.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5600.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5601.jpg
After dinner I decided to attack the wheels. The four on the van were the summer rims so just a spray with brake duster left to sit for 20 mins then a power wash off and a qucik go over with some brushes. I also cleaned the winter wheels that were in the back, they took two hits with brake duster and aggressive clay to clean then, no pics as I did them in the rain.
Plus arches scrubbed.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5603.jpg
Wheels came up really clean and the summer wheels were painted and cleared on the rears. gave them all two coats of Opti Seal both back and fronts.
Day Two
As i had to press on as I had the drivers side to do, back doors and half the bonnet not many pics were taken.
My mate who runs the body shop popped round to see how I was getting on. He was interested in the paint removal from yesterday. He got his all singing paint gauge out that reads layers and set about the van, then I calibrated my gauge and did the same readings, the gauges were out by about 1um. He then used both machines to look at the base paint on areas he knew had no clear, mainly in the engine bay and load area, he then worked out the paint removal to be 9um based on an average of both machines with the cheaper paint detective be as accuarte as his computer based machine. he could read the bumpers though that were all healthy. So the readings were on average 55um un clear and 110um cleared, pretty thin really. After day one the readings were averaging 102um on the corrected side.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5609.jpg
Whole van was refined with 3M Ultrafina and blue pad with the rotary, then changed to the DA to final finish.
After nearlly 23 hours now these are some finished reflection pics before LSP applied.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5613.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5619.jpg
The badge had a fair bit of polish in it.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5621.jpg
Cleaned with IPA and Wolf trim guard, not perfect but an improvement.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5622.jpg
Wheels Finished.
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5623.jpg
LSP for the van is two coats of Opti Seal applied and left to cure for 30 minutes. Then waxed with Swissvax Best Of Show given an hour to cure. Then a quick wipe down with Chemical Guys V7 to remove the dust that had settled on it.
Finished Pictures.....enjoy!!!!
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5634.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5635.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5636.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5637.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5639.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5640.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5641.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5642.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5646.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5648.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5649.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5650.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5651.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac347/mirrorfinishuk/VW%20Transporter%20Van/DSCN5652.jpg
Day Three
Just went over the van with a fine tooth comb, cleaned out all the door shuts and made sure it was ready for Tony to pick up.
All in all a fantastic machine to work on, even if a bit frustrating.
I would have like to have got some of the deeper marks out, but as the paint was so hard and pretty thin some of them had to stay.
Hope you all enjoy reading. 32 hours all in all, phew. I think the customer was happy as well!!!!
Steve :car: