Tesla S Rolls Back Time

So fellow Racing club Member has owned this 2013 S Series of for over a year and just hasn't had the ability to provide it the roll-back in ages and dirt that it has been crying out for. No worries, together we selected a package that would do just that and it turned out AMAZING! This no longer looks like a 5-6 year old car but rather nearly brand new.

Overall the car wasn't horrible but it did have a full covering in swirls and being without any layer of protection dirt was stuck to it like Velcro. The good news for Pearl White owners is the color and metallic flake work together to hide these imperfections most of the time. They do pop out at night under lights or in direct sun but the latter is relay only visible from the right angle and not across the entire panel. That all sounds good but those swirls mask the depth of the metallic and greatly reduce the reflective of the pearl and clear coat overall. They may not look too deep or harsh in the pics but in person they do pop out much more.

The plan on this car was to perform my Option 2: Premium Enhancement whereby the goal is to reduce the imperfections in the area of 75% or so. Great news is I often can knock them down much more and in this case wile the clear is a SUPER Hard layer, it corrected in the area of 90-95% and what imperfections do remain are not really ever going to be noticed since, as noted above, the color masks them well.

The car was polished, Coated with 2 layers of Cquartz UK 3.0, the glass was also coated with Gyeon's Q2 VIEW Product and the Trim Coated with Gyeon's Q2 TRIM product so Josh won't have to mess with any trim products after his standard washes. Now water will fly off his car like it should.

White can be a difficult color to capture with a camera but there's simply nothing like seeing a Tri-Color Pearl all cleaned up with a nice depth to the clear coat coming through just super clean and pure in person.

Photo wise, they are slim as I was pressed for time given I had one afternoon to finish this and out of respect that he had a 20 minute ride from work to my house then over a 1hr+ ride back home.

Process:

• Wash
• Iron X
• Nano Sponge - Fine Grade as this wasn't too bad
• Rupes LK900 Mille
• Rupes UHS Pads and Polish
• Quick once-over with Flex 3401 & LC Hybrid Frost White Pads & CarPro Essence
• Cquartz UK v3.0
• Gyeon Q2 TRIM
• Gyeon Q2 VIEW
• Topped with CarPro Reload

Some BEFORE Shots:

The car sure needed a strong clean up and the lower trim / rockers were caked with road paint and tar.


http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...8/original.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...9/original.jpg




With that the paint finish was also rather dull in appearance.

http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...7/original.jpg



Even the lights and plastics were badly marred up and not able to really "POP!" out and show off the clean lines of the car.


http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...0/original.jpg




The appearance of swirls was there even though masked well by the color of the paint


http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...1/original.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...3/original.jpg






http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...2/original.jpg





I absolutely LOVE the design of the exterior on the Model S. Timeless IMO. It is a BIG car for sure.


http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...1/original.jpg




http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...5/original.jpg






http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...7/original.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...6/original.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...8/original.jpg




http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...4/original.jpg




All the glass was polished to remove etchings and water spots, then coated including the roof which is all glass and will now shed water like it should.


http://www.pbase.com/timothylauro/im...9/original.jpg

Looks awesome man!

Looks fantastic!!

Awesome work and write up! And a beutieful finish and a great looking car!

How did you like the UHS system? And how was it polishing with the Mille?

/Tony

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SWETM

Awesome work and write up! And a beutieful finish and a great looking car!

How did you like the UHS system? And how was it polishing with the Mille?

/Tony

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Thanks Tony. I wish I had better pics but white is always tough, especially on really bright days/times.

UHS Wise.....jury is out for me until after tomorrow. The Tesla S has some hard paint....at least this 2013 did. The previous Pearl White Model 3 not so much. UHS performed "ok" but not to the level I expected cut-wise. Finishing wise, it did great. Cut-wise, I'm going to try it on a 15yr old BMW M5 tomorrow, dark blue metallic, so I'll have a better opinion of it after that car. Product wise, the polish removal is more of a compound vs polish, so just a bit more effort. I'm okay with that given it's not a smooth / fine polish.

I approached this car with a 1 step correction based on what the customer paid for but I ended up doing the entire driver side with 3 passes using my Flex 3401 and Purple Wool Pads then followed that up with the UHS System. I did so in essence of time as I had several interruptions throughout my work day and I was a bit behind. I'm really trying to dial-in my time spent and hoping if the UHS System can save me some vs having to 2-step I'll be happy. That said, I have my combo wool with ClearCut and then a quick follow up with polish really dialed-in strong and together are my go-to correction modes. Super fast and extremely good finish results. Stay tuned for more updates on this when I do the M5.

Mille wise, I've updated my thread in that forum. Not brushing you off, just keeping that thread the focus for my updates. :xyxthumbs: I'll more to it next.

Excellent results. I too think it’s a great design. The front end looks great with the black trim/grille. Not a fan of the all smooth body color models that are just flat.

Wow! Flawless work my friend.

Nice work and it looks great now!

That really looks great! I think it's so hard to make white colored cars look like they pop, and you did. Was there a lot of orange peel? Some of those 2013s -- like mine -- had a lot of peel. After 5 years and 4 rounds of polishing, a decent amount of the peel is improved, but certainly not gone.

The most annoying thing about mine is the door handles -- lots of scratches from little kids and from Tesla employees. They've all been replaced, but you can tell which ones are the oldest by the scratches. Not sure how to improve those.