Polished Bliss: Wet Sanding & 8 Hours machining....

Clark@Polishedbliss

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This was the latest detail :)
One of our Customers, Chris, who's current car i'm sure you'll have seen on here before....





....picked up his other toy at the weekend, a brand new RS4 Avant :d








(lucky git!)


Even more annoying was that Chris had made sure the car would be handed over to him with the protective wraps still on the car, with no dealer prep at all, this clearly hadnt happened, as there was product residue on the window rubbers and in panel gaps:







And more worrying.....




:rolleyes:

As always though, the car needed washed before i could properly see what i was dealing with, so it was foamed with the foam lance:




This was left to dwell while i cleaned the wheels with a non acidic tyre and wheel gel and a MF mitt.

The car was then rinsed at high pressure before being foamed again and washed carefully with the 2 bucket method. The fingertip test revealed that the car wasnt particularly smooth so i ended up claying the whole car with a mild clay, it was quite amazing the amount of crap that came off the paint!
I then used a Tar and Glue remover to remove any transport wax on the sills/door shuts etc before giving the car a final rinse and dried off with the leaf blower as usual :)

I then put the car inside to see just how much of the dealers prep i was going to have to correct...


A light scuff on the tailgate (looked worse in the metal, my camera struggled a bit at times due to the high flake content in the paint!):




Scuffs in/on the door handles:



Random nicks and scratches:






The worst bit by far was the near side wing:




There were also holograms all over the back bumper and a couple of random ones on the front bumper, amazingly the roof was spotless! :confused:


By this point though i was pretty pi$$ed off as this was a complete joke for a brand new £50,000 car (there were alot more defects than shown above), and Chris was on the phone to myself a few times during the first day for updates as he was letting the Salesmen know just how unimpressed he was too!

Paint readings were taken and luckily there were no nasty surprises on that side of things, everything was healthy, so onto the machine polishing.


Weapons of choice for this are pictured below:




The machine polishing alone took almost 8 hours as every single panel except the roof needed corrected, with some needing a 2nd hit to get them perfect. The nearside wing however was a different story...
Despite just looking like light swirling and marring, the scratches were pretty deep, this is what it looked like after 3 hits with the Rotary and the finishing polish:






I had to sand this area in order to fully remove them, taking in the region of 8 microns off in the process:





This was then polished out with the cerami-clear compound:






Last job was to polish the front grill surround, which had horrible buffer trails all over it:




This was masked off...




...and polished with a 4" polishing pad & the PC:




Perfect! (although the picture focus isnt, sorry :eek: )




Once the paint had been dusted down and HD Cleansed, like his S3, Chris's RS4 was to have Vintage applied - this was also applied to all the exterior plastics and trim:



This was left for a couple of hours while i also applied Vintage to the wheels (i find this works just aswell as wheel sealant after trying it on my own wheels), dressed the tyres, cleaned the tailpipes,detailed the interior including feeding the leather and i then gave the engine a quick spruce up before dressing with an aerospace protectant :cool:

Just before i had to go and pick Chris up i gave the car a final wipe down to remove any smears, and when we got back we took the final pics :)

Enjoy :thumb:


 




























I still cant believe how the Dealers can mess a brand new car up so bad, especially when the RS4 i did last week came from the same place and was spot on! maybe it was out of spite?? whatever the reason it is completely unacceptable and they have been invoiced for the full amount :thumb:

Thanks to Chris for letting me work on yet another great car (and colour!), and thanks to all that took the time to read the post! :)
 
Amazing job and I agree about the dealers handling of the car - its a really strange one!

so jealous! :(
 
I'm stunned on several levels:

What an awesome car it is

HoW jealous I am

How can a new car be handed over to the customer in such a condition?

And yet again, what a cracking job you guys have done.
 
sweet new car chris. Its just a shame that the dealer had to stuff up a new car so badly.

credit to the work on that one, awesome.
 
Thanks again Clark! The dealers have given me £400 credit for accessories, etc. so I'll have to see whats available - quite fancy the RS4 mats at a nice and cheap £350.

Did you get the CHs on? Any photos yet?
 
A neatly modified S3 and an RS4? What on earth do you do for a living Chris? (not that I'm jealous of course :motz:lol). They both look great. Any particular reason you went for blue? Don't get me wrong - fantabulous colour of course, just wondering.

Do you also have plans to mod the RS4 in the future?

Whatever you do - nice purchase! Have fun.

Rob

p.s I also agree - it's unacceptable the state of the car that it arrived in. The thing is so many people won't even realise such imperfections when they get new cars. You did the right thing in giving it to Polished Bliss - those boys are superb. But they'd be even more superb if they were based in the North East of England. :p lol
 
ChriS3 said:
Did you get the CHs on? Any photos yet?

Yeah i did, thanks again mate :)

They JUST clear the coilovers, and thats without spacers so i was quite surprised, they look soooo good on the car too, here's a couple of pics i took on my phone but it was pretty dark:

Cch.jpg


Ccha.jpg



I'll post up some more pics when i get its 5th (or 6th, i cant remember how many im on now!) coat of Vintage on, hopefully Sat :D
 
recomdos said:
A neatly modified S3 and an RS4? What on earth do you do for a living Chris? (not that I'm jealous of course :motz:lol). They both look great. Any particular reason you went for blue? Don't get me wrong - fantabulous colour of course, just wondering.

Do you also have plans to mod the RS4 in the future?

Whatever you do - nice purchase! Have fun.

Rob

Trust me, you wouldn't want my job. If I were paid by the amount of stress I have to take, then I be a much richer man. The RS4 is blue with black optics for a reason - look at the first pic for a clue...

No plans to mod the RS4 yet, but I'll be looking to change the geometry a little and try and get some more camber up front. I should also unplug the exhaust valves for a better noise more of the time. Maybe an exhaust and a remap at some point in the future.


And Clark, that makes me a little sad. They looked sooo good on the S3...
 
looks great clarke - need better quality pics and some sunshine!

what do you do as a profession Chris if you don't mind me asking?
 
Boydie said:
looks great clarke - need better quality pics and some sunshine!

what do you do as a profession Chris if you don't mind me asking?

Sssshhh, before he sees it - there's no e on the end of Clark.

I contract to Shell. Currently running their offshore maintenance scopes.
 
I've never seen sprint blue look so good..... why do polished bliss have to be so far away from London!!!

Well done guys - fabulous work as always!

And Chris - 2 awesome toys you've got for yourself!