2013 Jeep: Ridden Hard & Put Away Dirty!

[richy]

This Jeep, on paper, should be an easy job given the year, right? Well, not so fast. For starters, some idiot keyed it on the driver's door which was going to take some serious time to try to correct. And it was just plain dirty. Good for a Jeep I suppose, but a lot of work for me washing it when it was in the 30's!! (I'll share a marvelous invention to help with that a bit later...) I knew this was going to be a big job and quoted 10-14 hours. It was getting OG for protection.


Let's see what we were dealing with here:









It usually takes me about an hour to do the wheels, wells and barrels. Having to remove the spare and the big areas to clean in the wells bumped this up to just shy of 2 hours!


Scratch Pic on dirty door:















The barrels of these wheels took more effort than normal to get pristine. I had to do an extra step with wheel acid to bite into it.

Barrels and faces got treated first to Tarminator.
That was followed by Car Brite Wheel acid on both.
That step was followed by Zep Citrus to clean and neutralize the acid.

The tires were cleaned twice with Zep 505.

The wells were cleaned with LATA.


Here is a wheel just having been cleaned:





I had mentioned above about the "secret weapon" for washing in the cold. This is it:





My good friend Heath (aka COOTER) sent these to me last year as well as a pair for Carlos. They are called Seal Skinz. I tried inserting a link, but their page wouldn't load. Just google sealskinz and you'll find them. I had these on for over an hour in and out of the wash bucket, etc and my hands were dry and warm. The interesting thing was that I could feel the heat of the hot water through them, but not the cold. I love these things!!!! Heath, thank you once again my friend!

This Jeep was so dirty, that even spending over 2 hours washing it up it looked so much better. Here it is still wet and brought inside to get the heater going. The next step was the CarPro elastofoam block.



Now it was cleaned and decontaminated, I could inspect the paint for all the sins, not just the nasty scratch. Here is what I was dealing with:

From far away, it looked pretty good.




How will it stand up to my "Going before God" lights??









And some light scratches on both doors on the passenger side too:




SCRATCH REPAIR:

It was Friday night and I wanted to lay the paint down in the scratch and give it as much time as I could to harden prior to sanding it. Here it is after being filled with touch up paint:






I deliberately laid down a fair amount of paint b/c I wanted to make sure it got down deep into the scratch and filled it entirely.


The next afternoon I proceeded to sand it by hand with 2000 first followed by 2500. I then used my GG 3" polisher with a 3000 grit disc to even the area out. Here it is after sanding:









The bonus of ending your sanding with 3K grit is that it is quick and painless to compound out those marks. I kept taking paint readings throughout the process. The sanding marks were eliminated with my Flex 3401 + TB black wool + M105. That was followed up with Flex + white B/S + Opt Hyper Polish. I forgot how much I like the product and dislike the sprayer, LOL. The end result wasn't perfect, but in my humble opinion it was a very good transformation. Here is the end result under the discriminating inside lighting. Compare that to the outside shot later, there is a difference.


Here's a few at different angles:











Paint Correction:

The rest of the paint got the same 2 steps although the fenders and sides of the body at the fenders were done by my Dyna with 4" pads (yellow and white). Here's the back all done being polished prior to the trim being done. The rear wheel was replaced after the trim got coated.



Trim:

The trim on these is a big deal and what a great vehicle with which to try my new beta version of the DG trim coating. This one spreads easier which is one of the issues I've had with it. I spread it via a demoted mf (rough grade). Here's a 50/50 shot of the running board:

[richy]

Coating:

As mentioned, the paint got coated with Opti Guard as well as the wheels. The glass also did other than the windshield which received 2 coats of the Optimum Pro Glass coating.

The tires and wells were shot with DG Wet Shine via my air gun.

The job came in at exactly 14 hours.

Here are some inside shots of the finished product:












Bye, bye marks on hood!!




And a close up of the "Flawless Reflection", LOL.




Passenger side scratches gone:












And now for some outside shots. You can tell I was happy about how it came out due to the number of shots, LOL.














Some Reflection Shots:








The key scratch? Well it looks a lot better outside. They were very, very happy with the outcome.




A closeup of the wheel & barrel:









Thanks for looking. Comments always appreciated.

[Mike@DedicatedPerfection]

Looks great Richy! Nice work bringing it back to life.

[KillaCam]

Great job as usual. I'll be doing my girlfriends '13 wrangler soon. 2 step and cquartz. It's black so I'm sure it will be fun. I'm preparing myself for a lot of taping and 3" pads lol.

[Chicago Tommy]

Looks awesome, and that's a great color.

[jankerson]

Great Job.

[Klink10]

Very nice. The scratch repair was very well done and thanks for the method.

[richy]

Looks great Richy! Nice work bringing it back to life.

Thanks very much!

Great job as usual. I'll be doing my girlfriends '13 wrangler soon. 2 step and cquartz. It's black so I'm sure it will be fun. I'm preparing myself for a lot of taping and 3" pads lol.

Thank you. Yes, the small pads are mandatory.

Looks awesome, and that's a great color.

Thanks very much. I actually did one with the same colour earlier this summer, it is nice for sure!

Great Job.

Thanks very much.

Very nice. The scratch repair was very well done and thanks for the method.

Thanks very much. I did a thread on here with more detailed instructions here:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/...procedure.html

[DetailedTaco]

Awesome job! Thanks for the tip on the gloves too. Might have to grab a pair.

[Bunky]

Very nice Richy! You do wonders with scratches!