Critical Details: Jet Black E92 328XI - Major Paint Correction + Opti-Glass

[CriticalDetails]

This Jet Black BMW 328XI came in for a Major Paint Correction, Interior Rejuvenation Detail and Opti-Glass Application. The soft Jet Black paint had severe swirl marks throughout the paintwork and required a two-step paint correction. Menzerna Intensive Polish was used on an orange Lake Country buffing pad for the compounding stage and Menzerna PO85RD was used on a grey Lake Country buffing pad for the polishing stage. After 10 hours of compounding and polishing only a few random isolated deep scratches remained in the paint. Overall, I was able to achieve around a 90% level of correction including the RIDS. A total of 19 hours were required to fully detail this BMW 328XI.

Please excuse the Plasti-Dip on fender lip and in the wheel wells. I removed the Plasti-Dip from the fender lip after filming this portion of the video. The Plasti-Dip in the wheel wells would require a wheels off detail to fully remove. Also don’t ever apply masking tape to Plasti-Dipped moldings while buffing the paint. The 3M masking tape removed the black Plasti-Dip from the chrome window trim after being on a matter of hours. I accidentally removed the Plasti-Dip surrounding the windows which is why the window trim was black in the before detail footage and chrome in the after detail footage. If the window trim was not taped off the buffing pad would have surely removed the Plasti-Dip. You learn something new on every detail.


Vermont Auto Detailing: BMW 328XI Jet Black - Major Paint Correction + Opti-Glass (05401 05478) - YouTube

Be sure to visit Critical Details on Instagram (http://instagram.com/criticaldetails#) to view photos from this detail and past details.

[Chris@AutoCleanse]

Excellent work as usual. What kind of pads did you use to compound and polish. Just curious as you achived some great results. Thanks for posting and sharing.

[KS_Detailing]

Always enjoy your work and videos :dblthumb2:

[CriticalDetails]

Excellent work as usual. What kind of pads did you use to compound and polish. Just curious as you achived some great results. Thanks for posting and sharing.

Compounding - Menzerna Intensive Polish via orange Lake Country flat pad
Polishing - Menzerna PO85RD via grey Lake Country flat pad.

Thank you for watching.

[CriticalDetails]

Always enjoy your work and videos :dblthumb2:

Thank you.

[DG3.7]

Very nice cinematics in the video, looked really professional, and the music was a great touch.

Car came out awesome especially the 50/50 shots which spoke volumes to the work!

[Mike@DedicatedPerfection]

Very nice work Trevor. The paint was hammered and you brought it back to life with what you had on hand.

Seeing the after results and the two step approach, pick up some FG400 or SI1500 for compound and SF4000 for finishing work.

[JSFM35x]

Nice job on the video and the bimmer

[CriticalDetails]

Very nice cinematics in the video, looked really professional, and the music was a great touch.

Car came out awesome especially the 50/50 shots which spoke volumes to the work!

Thank you. I have been getting a lot of practice with the Glidecam lately and I am starting to get the hang of it. The picture quality of the GoPro Hero3 Black is very sharp and with a little color grading in the editing process the results rival more expensive DSLR cameras. I have to remember to film a video on Pro-Tune mode and compare the footage. Pro-Tune is the equivalent of shooting RAW on a DSLR camera.

I think that the 50/50 in this video was even more dramatic than the 50/50 in my Subaru STI OBP detailing video.


Very nice work Trevor. The paint was hammered and you brought it back to life with what you had on hand.

Seeing the after results and the two step approach, pick up some FG400 or SI1500 for compound and SF4000 for finishing work.

I don’t think that the paint had ever been properly polished since the 328XI was new almost 80,000 miles ago. I definitely need to pick up some SF4000 and FG400 in case I get another vehicle with hammered black paint. The Intensive Polish got the job done but I had to perform one round of buffing on speed 6 and then a second round of buffing on speed 4 to lessen the compounding haze. I could have probably saved an hour or two in the compounding step with something like FG400. It must have been the soft Jet Black BMW paint because PO85RD on a grey pad had quite a bit of correcting power.

Thanks for watching.


Nice job on the video and the bimmer

Thank you for the compliment. It is always nice when an owner can leave their vehicle with you long enough to properly document the detail.