1995 Porsche 911 Cerrera 4

[tuscarora dave]

Hi Mike, Nice job on that Porshe for Operation Comfort, I have a few questions about the car. I have a 95 911 Cerrera 4 in black to detail soon. So I noticed there is a sort of protective film on the front half of the rear fender flare on these cars.

These are my questions , did you have to treat this protective film any different than the rest of the car's paint? Is that protective film soft plastic similar to 3M Clear Bra? Did you have any issues with polish or wax residues creating a white line on the edge of this protective film that was hard or imposible to remove?

Thanks in advance for any reply, TD

[Mike Phillips]

Hi Mike, Nice job on that Porsche for Operation Comfort,

Thank you, this one...

1994 Porsche Detailed for "Operation Comfort" Modeled by Brittany from Stuart, Florida

These are my questions ,

did you have to treat this protective film any different than the rest of the car's paint?

Yes. The first thing I did on this car was to see what the staining on the driver's door was? Looked like either staining or almost like a painter's blend line but it wasn't a blend line, just looked like it. Used the least aggressive approach to test the defect because if there was some kind of underlying problem with the paint I didn't want to buy Sam a paint job.

Tested Wolfgang Finishing Glaze with a white polishing pad on the PC and after a few passes whatever the staining issue was... it was no more...

Actually in this shot here, the only thing polished so far was a section below the driver's side mirror and you can see my camera flash on the door just under the mirror.




So the first thing I did after visually inspecting the car and finding this problem was to make sure the problem could be fixed because if it couldn't then the detail project would have been over at that point.

Next, once I found the paint problem could be fixed the next thing I wanted to check out was the protective film because it was a little on the dull side and was going to take away from the beauty of the paint after the paint was polished.

I found the protective film to be soft, almost rubbery feeling when you pushed your finger over it under pressure, this is usually a sign the film will not take well to machine polishing. Just in case, I tried a 4" Cyan Pad with Wolfgang Finishing Glaze to a small section and polished it for a a few seconds and then wiped the residue off and inspected, there were no visual indications of improvement. It didn't look like it caused any harm but it didn't look like it did any good.

At that point I decided to just hand wax it with the Deep Gloss Paint Sealant using a microfiber applicator pad and call that good enough. Reasoning was, first it's a protective film and it's on the car in the location it's in for a reason, it gets hit with debris and takes the brunt of the abrasion so the paint doesn't have to, because Sam drives this Porsche, even if it could be made to look as clear and glossy as the paint it wouldn't stay that way and it wasn't that way originally.

The other reason I opted to just rub it out by hand and call it good was because in the big picture, I could spend a ton of time on it or a little time on it and my judgment was that the end-result wasn't going to be a huge difference either way.

I also didn't want to keep testing different products because that was going to eat into time needed for the car in total.

Is that protective film soft plastic similar to 3M Clear Bra?

Yes, soft and rubbery feeling.

Did you have any issues with polish or wax residues creating a white line on the edge of this protective film that was hard or impossible to remove?

Yes.

First, there was wax residue from the previous detailers, so I had two basic option, try to remove their residue and then not get any new residue on the film line, or buff out the car and then remove my residue and previous residue at the same time.

I opted for the second option as the Wolfgang products wipe off easy and I knew that my residue would actually help me to remove the previous residue by agitating it a little as I worked near these edges.

In the end, I used by fingernail, a nylon brush to chase the outside edges and that worked pretty well to remove any leftover residue.

Definitely the protective plastic film and the rear deck-lid with the louvers and the grill were the most difficult parts of this detailing project.

Good questions... maybe others that have dealt with working on this specific brand of protective film will chime in and share what worked for them...

[tuscarora dave]

Thank you for the speedy reply Mike. I really do appreciate it. For the time it takes to ask a few simple questions before hand "we" just saved "me" a bit of time and possible trouble.

I love looking at the great pictures of the various sweet cars on these detailing forums especially when a beautiful model is involved But the sharing of my experience and learning from other's experience is the real deal! Thanks again!!