2012 Mercedes Benz GL350

**Sizzle Chest** · 11-09-2015, 05:11 PM

I had a new customer contact me last week about her black GL350. Her young son decided that he wants to be an artist and had taken a rock and scratched pretty much everything he could reach on the paint surface. I wanted to look at the vehicle to see what could be done. She brought it in for a quote. It looked pretty bad.

I did a few test spots to see if I could do anything at all. She did not want this to turn into an insurance job and have the vehicle repainted. I made no guarantees.

The vehicle came in today for a complete paint correction and sealant application.

I found that this paint was extremely soft and marred very easily.

UWW'd the vehicle after arrival and after it cooled down. Meg's D108 on engine compartment. Adam's deep wheel cleaner and misc brushes on wheels. Tuf Shine cleaner on tires. Tuf Shine brush.

Medium nano sponge for clay. Dodo born slippery for lube.

Flex 3401 for correction-speeds 4-6 and Griot's 6" for sealant application.

HD CUT and HD SPEED was on deck for today.

HD POXY lsp

Meg's 5" thin foam cutting, polishing and waxing discs.

Blackfire tire dressing.

Blackfire AIO tire/trim on engine compartment

Adam's total interior detailer on interior.

Metro vac and master blaster

HD glass on glass

I don't think I am forgetting anything, but I may have...this thing had a TON of real estate to cover and I am BEAT!!!!

Onto the pics! Let them tell the story...

How the vehicle arrived to me:

This is how the majority of the vehicle looked:

The 'artwork' on the vehicle was just ridiculous!

50/50

Tailgate scratches:

After:

After shots:

End result: SUV came out great! Customer was absolutely blown away by the results I could achieve. It was not 100%, but I feel I got about 85% corrected. I could not get all of the very heavy scratches completely out, nor a lot of the road rash (hit a fence), however, for not wet sanding and not having to have the car repainted, I feel, as does the customer, the results are excellent!

Thanks for looking!

**LSNAutoDetailing** · 11-09-2015, 05:25 PM

Hey... you look nothing like your avatar!
Looks like you brought all your shoes and glasses to this detail!

Awesome job sizzle! Congrats... Nice work as usual.

**Sizzle Chest** · 11-09-2015, 05:29 PM

^^^^Thanks there tough guy! Yeah, usually: my shoes fell off! And my glasses too! LOL

I'm good with the paint work too!

**Sicoupe** · 11-09-2015, 05:55 PM

Outstanding job Scott! Looks amazing my friend!

**Ebg18t** · 11-09-2015, 07:10 PM

Damn. Please tell us about how you reduced the deep scratches.

**GSKR** · 11-09-2015, 07:30 PM

Originally Posted by Sizzle Chest

I had a new customer contact me last week about her black GL350. Her young son decided that he wants to be an artist and had taken a rock and scratched pretty much everything he could reach on the paint surface. I wanted to look at the vehicle to see what could be done. She brought it in for a quote. It looked pretty bad.

I did a few test spots to see if I could do anything at all. She did not want this to turn into an insurance job and have the vehicle repainted. I made no guarantees.

The vehicle came in today for a complete paint correction and sealant application.

I found that this paint was extremely soft and marred very easily.

UWW'd the vehicle after arrival and after it cooled down. Meg's D108 on engine compartment. Adam's deep wheel cleaner and misc brushes on wheels. Tuf Shine cleaner on tires. Tuf Shine brush.

Medium nano sponge for clay. Dodo born slippery for lube.

Flex 3401 for correction-speeds 4-6 and Griot's 6" for sealant application.

HD CUT and HD SPEED was on deck for today.

HD POXY lsp

Meg's 5" thin foam cutting, polishing and waxing discs.

Blackfire tire dressing.

Blackfire AIO tire/trim on engine compartment

Adam's total interior detailer on interior.

Metro vac and master blaster

HD glass on glass

I don't think I am forgetting anything, but I may have...this thing had a TON of real estate to cover and I am BEAT!!!!

Onto the pics! Let them tell the story...

How the vehicle arrived to me:

This is how the majority of the vehicle looked:

The 'artwork' on the vehicle was just ridiculous!

50/50

Tailgate scratches:

After:

After shots:

End result: SUV came out great! Customer was absolutely blown away by the results I could achieve. It was not 100%, but I feel I got about 85% corrected. I could not get all of the very heavy scratches completely out, nor a lot of the road rash (hit a fence), however, for not wet sanding and not having to have the car repainted, I feel, as does the customer, the results are excellent!

Thanks for looking!

very very nice job.

**GSKR** · 11-09-2015, 07:33 PM

Mercedes and porche have good paint to deal with that situation ,try that on Lexus crap thin paint.

**Sizzle Chest** · 11-09-2015, 09:19 PM

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Originally Posted by Ebg18t

Damn. Please tell us about how you reduced the deep scratches.

First of all, this Mercedes had extremely soft paint. One of the softest I have run into besides some Porsche paint. It marred easily with your finger!

So, with that being said, I used HD CUT and a Meg's crimson low profile cutting disc on my Flex 3401 at speeds of 4 to 6. Pretty decent pressure and numerous passes. (I took paint reading before and during this process so I new I wasn't 'killing' the paint) I then wanted to reduce some of the haze that the CUT and 'heavy' pad left so I went over the same areas with my Flex and a Meg's yellow polishing low profile disc. Speeds of 3-4 were used. This really 'cleaned up' the panels, finished down great, and left a fantastic gloss afterwards as well.

That's my process. If this had been 'normal to hard' paint, I would have been doing some wet sanding in order to reduce these monsters!

Hope this helps and thanks for looking!

**wing commander** · 11-10-2015, 12:31 AM

Thank you for such great information.This type of post really contributes in a positive way and makes me happy that I read your job story.

**Desertnate** · 11-10-2015, 08:28 AM

Amazing work!

Looking at those scratches I'm impressed that you could even get 85% correction. They look really deep. Could you feel them with your finger nail or do they just look deeper in a picture than in reality?