2015 Lexus IS250 Corrected and Coated

I've been meaning to post this for a while but because of work and lack of time, I've been putting it off. This was actually done in June and it was sort of an experiment for me. This car was purchased as part of Lexus Certified Pre-Owned program last year in November. It had very low kilometers and I was able to talk the sales guy down about 5 grand on purchase so I thought it was a great deal. Plus my girlfriend thought it was pretty, so it's a win win. After I purchased this last year, there was no way I was going to do any paint correction or coating when the average weather was about 6 degrees or so Celsius. That's about 42 degrees Fahrenheit for most of the forum. So in order to ensure no more damage was done to the car, I clayed it and applied Pinnacle Black Label Synergy to it. It looked great except for the swirls but that was a whole another matter. To give you a bit of a background, when I purchased the car, the agreement was for them to not detail the exterior at all. The Sales Manager was confused and asked why, and I basically told him I would rather do it myself. He was a very nice gentleman and I didn't want to insult him by saying I don't trust his minimum wage detailers to run a rotary over thin Lexus paint. I already knew I had my work cut out for me and I didn't want to add to it.

So here are the pre-correction swirls on it, this car was obviously rotaried by the dealership when it was purchased and the previous user took advantage of the Lexus wash tokens. After my purchase, the sales manager handed me a handful of tokens for the automatic brush wash they had on site. I could take my car there at any time and get my car washed. What surprised me was he even said, it was better to do a touchless wash and because too many runs through their car wash will scratch the car up. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that he would admit that but I digress.

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These are just one side of it. I didn't even bother taking more because, well, quite frankly this was everywhere.

The car was washed with ONR, as well as clayed with ONR and then Iron Xed. After the Iron X, I hosed it all off and dried it. I forgot to take pictures of the wheels but the wheels were not too bad, I had the car for about two days before I put on the winter tire rims so a quick Iron X and then Zep 505 on the rims and rubber cleaned them up. Afterwards, I applied Reload to the rims and then TW Tire Coating, five coats total.

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So as an experiment, I used a Lake Country MF cutting pad with CarPro Essence to compound and then Hyper Polish to finish it off. To be frank, it worked better than I thought it would. I figured I would have to break out the CG V32. I know a lot of guys on here don't like their polishes but I find their V32 with an Orange pad a great one step as long as you spritz the pad with distilled water to get rid of the dusting issue.

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This was the amount I used to prime the pad. I also keep a bucket of ONR solution which I keep my pads dipped in, as well as a seperate grit guard I use where I dip the pad in ONR and then spin it on the highest setting pressing hard against the grit guard to clean it.

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This is the result between a freshly used MF pad and my ghetto pad washing method.

Attachment 58811 Dirty Pad

Attachment 58812 Cleaned Pad


Now at this point the paint looked pretty good so I figured ok.. I'm already screwing around with the nature of things by using a Glazing finishing polish as a "compound" of sorts and using an orange pad to finish off with a polish. So, I decided why not violate nature some more? I put three dots of Essence on the MF pad and give it a spritz of Hyper Polish at the same time. I figured if that didn't work well, I would just go back to my original method but.. this was the result.

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That worked well for me so screw it, the whole car got that treatment. Now that being said, this is still a daily driver and there were a few deep scratches I didn't bother trying to compound. I actually hate compounding in all honesty, don't get me wrong I know those who do this professionally do it for their bread and butter. However for me, being that this has already been rotaried by someone when it was brand new, the last thing I want to do is compound it. Especially since I can live with the odd scratches on the hood and the roof. I probably could have got it out with a compound but I would rather save the clear coat for when I go over it with some Essence and an Orange pad every year or two.

After that, the car was wiped down with CarPro Essence diluted with about 15 percent IPA mixture three times. Then it was Gloss coated. The blue applicator sponge was as much a PITA as I remembered it. It squeaked like a small vermin in heat quite frankly and I switched over to the CarPro block and the MF suede applicator cloth. It was Gloss Coat so the process was easy. I did two coats, and then let it bake in the sun for a few hours.

This is the end result.

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The windows were treated with an oddly effective combination. I used GTechniqs G5 and then Pinnacle Synergy Black Label after. I have that on my Mazda since Spring of Last year and it still beads off at 55 km/h or around 35 Miles in the rain.

nice job, love that color too...
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damn thats nice! Love that color. My sister had a dark gray IS250 and man i loved that car! She always drive it in ECO mode to get the gas mileage and everytime i visited it went straight to sport mode. Eco mode had to long of a pause between touching the gas pedal and it actually moving, lol. and a big difference in suspension.

Day to day I do have to say, eco mode saves you gas. But if some punk pulls up next to me with his fart can mufflered lowered car and revs at me.. sports mode gets worked.

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Originally Posted by WillSports3

Day to day I do have to say, eco mode saves you gas. But if some punk pulls up next to me with his fart can mufflered lowered car and revs at me.. sports mode gets worked.

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HAHA yah i hear yah. she lived in seattle and her work was only 4 miles away but it took 20 minutes so her gas mileage was always like 12, lmao. she needed eco as much as she could.

That is looks so rich!

Did you find paint on the soft side?

Tom

I would say so. I've used an orange pad before with Essence on this car when I polished out one panel when I first got it just to see how soft it was and it was fine. I just used MF pads this time to make the process faster.

F-Sports are nice. I have a black GS350 F-Sport. Is much easier to maintain thanks to this site and having applied a coating to it.

Very nice work...that color too! Looks great!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WillSports3

The windows were treated with an oddly effective combination. I used GTechniqs G5 and then Pinnacle Synergy Black Label after. I have that on my Mazda since Spring of Last year and it still beads off at 55 km/h or around 35 Miles in the rain.

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You mean Pinnacle Black Label Diamond Glass Coating or a wax?