Wills.WindowsAndWheels
10-17-2011, 12:43 AM
Whats up everyone,
this was my first family member job. My cousin had seen a few of my write ups that i'd done of all the OTHER car's we've done and wanted to have us take a crack at his Benz.
When we went to go bid it, it was in a parking garage...you could see some of the damage to the paint in there but we knew regardless of its condition we were going to hook him up.
The color on this car was really cool, from one angle it looked blue, from another it looked purple. We set it up on the weekend...luckily the weather was really nice...beautiful clear and warm day (in the 90s :dblthumb2:) with a little breeze...perfect weather to do some detailing.
Products used were:
Pressure washer
Dawn Soap (to strip away any old wax, though there wasn't much!)
Wash Mitts
Megs APC
Megs APC+
Megs D300 & D301 along with 5" cutting and finishing discs
LOTS of microfiber towels
Megs #40 to dress interior
Wolfgang Tire Gel
ORN Clay lube (used for claying and for cleaning rims)
Hi Tech Magna Sponge
Lil Green Extractor w/Oxyclean
Pinnacle Leather Conditioner
Flex 3401
Griots D.A Polisher
We got there...unloaded all of our stuff ( I swear it looks like we're moving in when we unload all of our gear), got the keys and pulled it out for our first look at it in the sun....haha...yeah this was fun.
Here's what we saw:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Hood_before_1_2.JPG
Yeahhhhh we had a little work cut out for us.
Looked a little close and it just got worse:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Hood_before_3_1.JPG
*cringes* yeah...only thing worse than swirls are dirty swirls!
Its ok though, we can handle it.
Heres a look at it from a distance:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Angle_Before2.JPG
So after taking a few before pictures and a before video (Video will be posted at the end of the write up....turned out SWEET) we pulled it back in and got to work.
So we started out with knocking away most of the dirt first with a little of this:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/pressure_top.png
After looking at this picture, i told my sis i looked like a damn giant...her response was "You are"...:laughing: aw she loves me so much lol.
Hit the rims with a little APC and then sprayed with the pressure washer, it knocked away most of the grime...this was before:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/wheel_before1.JPG
yeah, they were suppose to be silver lol. Had to follow up with spraying them with an ONR mix and wiping them clean with a MF towel...then dressed the tires with Wolfgang Tire Gel...they turned out rather nice
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/wheel_finished.JPG
I went ahead and started doing some clay bar work and my sis started working on the interior...this was a convertible so wasn't much room for two people to work on the inside at once...
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/claying.png
The inside was rather clean to begin with....so didn't bother with any before pictures...got a good amount of dirt out of the carpets and mats, but you couldn't really see just by looking at them. Leather came out real nice and the interior turned out looking good.
Shadows kinda threw this pic off some but, still i like this angle for convertibles :)
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Interior_finished.JPG
Next the back breaking work began. This was a small car, but it also meant lots of small areas to work on. First thing we noticed was that there was a painted panel that wasn't noticeable until the top was down (area directly behind the seats)
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Top_Down.JPG
So we decided to knock it out first and then work on the rest of the car...the swirls on it were just as bad as anywhere else...
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Back_before_2_1.JPG
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/back_before_3_.JPG
I decided to give the Flex a try with the Meguiars Microfiber system. I've heard people say yes and no to this...all depends upon who you ask...i wanted to find out for myself.
For ME, with THIS car..it worked just fine. I checked with the Brinkman light, in the sun and with halogens and there was no bad marring left like some people have reported. I DID set the speed pretty low (about 3 or 3.5) but it really helped when working body lines where you want the pad to keep spinning but need to put a little pressure on the edge of the pad to get good correction along those lines. A regular DA more times than not will stop spinning, and thus stop correcting the paint, either that or you have to do it by hand.
Here is what the area looked like after hitting it with the Flex along with a 5" cutting MF pad and D300 correction compound:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/back_finished_2_.JPG
and
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/back_finished.JPG
Lookin MUCH better.
This picture was kind of cool after we finished that area. It almost looked 3D, like you could see through the paint and the tree was underneath:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/back_finished_3_.JPG
We double up using the Flex along with the Griots to finish polishing out the rest of the car. It sure is a pain to get to those really low panels..which were ALL paint, no plastic runners of any type...but hey its part of the job, we don't cut corners (though we have been known to cut ourselves short when bidding a job lol!)
I did a before shot with the brinkmann light....the paint was horribly hazy due to the nasty swirls:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/brinkman_before.JPG
Such a shame for such nice paint to look so bad...after a single pass with D300 however, it cleared right up. Note this was BEFORE the finishing wax was even applied:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/brinkman_finished.JPG
this was my first family member job. My cousin had seen a few of my write ups that i'd done of all the OTHER car's we've done and wanted to have us take a crack at his Benz.
When we went to go bid it, it was in a parking garage...you could see some of the damage to the paint in there but we knew regardless of its condition we were going to hook him up.
The color on this car was really cool, from one angle it looked blue, from another it looked purple. We set it up on the weekend...luckily the weather was really nice...beautiful clear and warm day (in the 90s :dblthumb2:) with a little breeze...perfect weather to do some detailing.
Products used were:
Pressure washer
Dawn Soap (to strip away any old wax, though there wasn't much!)
Wash Mitts
Megs APC
Megs APC+
Megs D300 & D301 along with 5" cutting and finishing discs
LOTS of microfiber towels
Megs #40 to dress interior
Wolfgang Tire Gel
ORN Clay lube (used for claying and for cleaning rims)
Hi Tech Magna Sponge
Lil Green Extractor w/Oxyclean
Pinnacle Leather Conditioner
Flex 3401
Griots D.A Polisher
We got there...unloaded all of our stuff ( I swear it looks like we're moving in when we unload all of our gear), got the keys and pulled it out for our first look at it in the sun....haha...yeah this was fun.
Here's what we saw:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Hood_before_1_2.JPG
Yeahhhhh we had a little work cut out for us.
Looked a little close and it just got worse:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Hood_before_3_1.JPG
*cringes* yeah...only thing worse than swirls are dirty swirls!
Its ok though, we can handle it.
Heres a look at it from a distance:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Angle_Before2.JPG
So after taking a few before pictures and a before video (Video will be posted at the end of the write up....turned out SWEET) we pulled it back in and got to work.
So we started out with knocking away most of the dirt first with a little of this:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/pressure_top.png
After looking at this picture, i told my sis i looked like a damn giant...her response was "You are"...:laughing: aw she loves me so much lol.
Hit the rims with a little APC and then sprayed with the pressure washer, it knocked away most of the grime...this was before:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/wheel_before1.JPG
yeah, they were suppose to be silver lol. Had to follow up with spraying them with an ONR mix and wiping them clean with a MF towel...then dressed the tires with Wolfgang Tire Gel...they turned out rather nice
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/wheel_finished.JPG
I went ahead and started doing some clay bar work and my sis started working on the interior...this was a convertible so wasn't much room for two people to work on the inside at once...
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/claying.png
The inside was rather clean to begin with....so didn't bother with any before pictures...got a good amount of dirt out of the carpets and mats, but you couldn't really see just by looking at them. Leather came out real nice and the interior turned out looking good.
Shadows kinda threw this pic off some but, still i like this angle for convertibles :)
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Interior_finished.JPG
Next the back breaking work began. This was a small car, but it also meant lots of small areas to work on. First thing we noticed was that there was a painted panel that wasn't noticeable until the top was down (area directly behind the seats)
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Top_Down.JPG
So we decided to knock it out first and then work on the rest of the car...the swirls on it were just as bad as anywhere else...
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/Back_before_2_1.JPG
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/back_before_3_.JPG
I decided to give the Flex a try with the Meguiars Microfiber system. I've heard people say yes and no to this...all depends upon who you ask...i wanted to find out for myself.
For ME, with THIS car..it worked just fine. I checked with the Brinkman light, in the sun and with halogens and there was no bad marring left like some people have reported. I DID set the speed pretty low (about 3 or 3.5) but it really helped when working body lines where you want the pad to keep spinning but need to put a little pressure on the edge of the pad to get good correction along those lines. A regular DA more times than not will stop spinning, and thus stop correcting the paint, either that or you have to do it by hand.
Here is what the area looked like after hitting it with the Flex along with a 5" cutting MF pad and D300 correction compound:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/back_finished_2_.JPG
and
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/back_finished.JPG
Lookin MUCH better.
This picture was kind of cool after we finished that area. It almost looked 3D, like you could see through the paint and the tree was underneath:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/back_finished_3_.JPG
We double up using the Flex along with the Griots to finish polishing out the rest of the car. It sure is a pain to get to those really low panels..which were ALL paint, no plastic runners of any type...but hey its part of the job, we don't cut corners (though we have been known to cut ourselves short when bidding a job lol!)
I did a before shot with the brinkmann light....the paint was horribly hazy due to the nasty swirls:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/brinkman_before.JPG
Such a shame for such nice paint to look so bad...after a single pass with D300 however, it cleared right up. Note this was BEFORE the finishing wax was even applied:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/1287/brinkman_finished.JPG