2011 BMW 550i Black Sapphire Metallic

[Sizzle Chest]

I had a customer schedule a paint correction with me. 2011 BMW 550i. Black Sapphire Metallic Paint. Black interior. It has around 50K miles on it. It’s his daily driver. It does live in a garage when he is home.

This vehicle had some issues! Mainly some severe water spots/etching all over the flat surfaces as well as swirls and scratches.

I wish the ‘before’ pics would show more of how bad it really was. The paint was very dull, hazy and just wasn’t popping.

I have about 17 hours into this ultimate driving machine!

Process:
Foam cannon with Surf City Garage prep/strip wash. I also added about 2 ounces of Adam’s APC to the mix. Wash media: Micro-chenille wash mitt. I then did an iron decontamination with Iron-X soap. I had previously coated the wheels on this vehicle a few weeks ago, so they cleaned up with my wash solution and a few Daytona speed brushes/misc brushes. (After further inspection, I noticed that when the customer had his new tires mounted, the tire shop slopped all sorts of crap all over ‘my’ beautiful coated wheels! I had to pull them off and APC them down to clean them up.)
Clay: Nano speedy prep fine sponge.
Clay lube: DoDo born to be slippery.

Took numerous paint readings to see what I was dealing with. From my initial inspection of the vehicle a few weeks ago, I knew that it had some body work done previously. I wanted to be sure that I knew/remembered where exactly, as well as wanting to see ‘how much’ I had to work with due to me most likely having to get aggressive in order to remove as much of the etching/defects/etc as I could.

Time for a test spot!

The hood, deck lid and roof were the worst areas of this vehicle. I taped off an area on the hood and started out with a Megs foam cutting pad and HD cut. It was taking care of business, however, not as quickly or easily as I wanted. I had to step up in ‘power’. LOL. I like the HD line up due to previous experience with them as well as the low dusting properties, so I wanted to remain using HD cut. I bumped up my pad choice to a TufBuf black wool cutting pad. Now I was in business! This and HD cut KO’d the majority of the defects! They also finished down surprisingly well.
So the flat surfaces were hit with HD cut and the TufBuf black wool pad. For the vertical surfaces I used a Megs burgundy foam cutting pad. Worked like magic!

After compounding I switched to HD Polish and a yellow Megs foam polishing pad. This really amped up the shine/clarity/depth/flake.

From there I used the Pinnacle Black Label Surface Cleansing Polish. I applied this with my Griot’s 6” and a black Megs Foam Finishing pad.

I then proceeded to coat the paintwork and trim with the Pinnacle Black Label Paint Coating V2.
The wheels I pulled off the vehicle and cleaned with some APC. Tires were dressed with CarPro PERL @ 100%. Glass cleaned with Adam’s glass cleaner and coated with Pinnacle Black Diamond Glass Coating. The exhaust was cleaned, polished and protected with Pinnacle exhaust cleaner & brightener. The interior was first vacuumed and then cleaned with DP total interior cleaner and then coated and protected with Ultima Interior Guard Plus. The engine compartment was cleaned with some Adam’s APC and then coated and protected with Sonus Trim & MotorKote.

List of equipment/products:
Machines: Flex 3401, Rupes 75, and M7 1” pneumatic rotory.
Pads: Megs burgundy cutting pad. Megs yellow polishing pad. Megs black foam finishing pad. Rupes blue cutting pad. Orange hydrotech pad. Black wool buff-n-shine. Misc 1-2” pads. TufBuf black wool pad.
Compound/cutting: HD Cut.
Polish/finishing: HD polish.
Exhaust tips: Pinnacle exhaust cleaner & brightener.
Glass: Adam’s glass cleaner.
Microfibers: numerous and a variety!
Interior: DP total interior cleaner. All surfaces were treated with Ultima Interior Guard Plus.
Vacuum: Metro vac-n-blow.
LSP: Pinnacle Black Label Diamond Paint Coating. V2.
Glass: Pinnacle Black Label Diamond Glass Coating.
Wheels: Pinnacle Black Label Diamond Wheel coating.
Tires were dressed with CarPro PERL.
Engine compartment/covers: Sonus Trim and Motorkote.


I hope I didn’t miss anything and that you enjoyed my write-up!

Thanks for looking!

Pics:
Some defects that I encountered.














Taking some readings:






Test spot and 50/50's










This picture shows the hood 50/50-notice the overhead lights and how they are so muddled and cloudy on the side that has not been compounded yet.




Getting all taped up!




Deck lid before


Deck lid 50/50's





Hood after correction


Interior work




50/50 of drivers side door after Ultima application


50/50 of rear seat after Ultima application








'My' nice freshly coated wheels after the tire shop got done with installing a new set of hoops!



Hood after polishing:



DONE!
















Reflection shots!


Flake is popping!


What camera lens and I using?








Engine shots







Thanks a million for wading through this long and chock full of pictures post!

[Sicoupe]

Awesome job like always my friend!

[Audi X2]

Holy wow Scott! That paint is popping and sizzling now!
That is a lot of hard work in this miserable heat and humidity, but the end result proves to be worth the effort.

One more awesome job and satisfied Auto Dermatology customer

[medicscott]

Very sweet. Thanks for sharing.

[bill walsh]

Wow

[sayroger]

Great job looks very nice

[AZ Mike]

Beautiful job. Thanks for the detailed write up.

[Sizzle Chest]

Thanks all! The comments are much appreciated!!!

You know it Buddy...I was melting for 2.5 days!!!

[WRAPT C5Z06]

Nice job, looks great!

Who's Porsche is that?

[DeansDetailing]

Niiiice!!!