Polished Bliss: a rack from Germany!

Done and written up by Clark, posted by me...

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Thought I better post something in here again seeings as it's been a while! This is a multiple car post consisting of a few cars I've done over the last month or so.

So, a nice easy one to start off with, a regular customer's new toy:







The paintwork on the R8 was pretty good as the car has done very little miles so this was just a 1 day protection detail for now. The wheels were cleaned with Menz 7.5 Tyre and Wheel Gel:





Arches/shuts etc were done with P21S. Hyperwash was used as the pre-wash foam:



This was left to dwell for 5 mins and then pressure washed off:



The usual 2BM was used and the car was then put inside for claying, using Meguiars Mild Detailing Clay and Last Touch:



The top half of the car was loaded with various contaminants:



I then dried the car off with a waffle weave towel and the leaf blower and then set about cleansing/protecting the paint. Only really one choice for a silver car:



This was applied to a damp MF applicator...



...then worked into the paint:



This was applied to the whole car and then removed using a Poorboys DMT.

The next stage in the Werkstat Acrylic System is the spray sealant:



This is sprayed onto a MF and buffed over the paintwork:



I applied 4 coats in total, leaving 30 mins between each coat and then gave the car a complete wipe down with Acrylic Glos. Wheels sealed with PB Wheel Sealant, tyres dressed with Blackfire's Polycharged Tyre Gel:



The engine was given an APC wipe down and dressed with 303 Aerospace Protectant:







Tailpipes were polished with Megs NXT and sealed with Blackfire Metal sealant, the interior was fully detailed too but muggins here forgot to take any pics!

After pics:

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Next up was a brand new Audi TTS with little more than delivery mileage.

To cut a long story short - the owner brought the car out to us the morning after Audi had handed it over to her in the showroom and we were completely shocked at the state of the paintwork. We've had to deal with some shockers that have come out of the local Audi Dealership here in Aberdeen but this one took the pi$$ to be honest. Fortunately, the Dealership agreed to pay us to fix it.

The usual wash routine was carried out so i wont bore you with that but instead we'll start with the defects. This is what they thought was an acceptable level to hand over a brand new car to a customer (the car hadnt been washed other than by Audi themselves untill it came to us):











This was the worst bit though...



They'd manage to inflict a pretty deep scratch in the drivers door/rear 1/4:





The owner told Audi not to try and fix it, but I think they maybe did, what do you think?





Disgraceful. No other word for it.

Knowing that the majority of the car would be easy enough to correct, i set about the scratch on the drivers door - using the tools below:



2000 and 4000 sanding dics were used to remove approx 10 microns of paint:



The sanding haze was then polished out:



But wait! Put the light on it and it doesnt look so good:

This seems to be a common thing when wet sanding. Alot of people polish the sanding marks out, or at least they think they do because the gloss comes back incredibly easily, but as you can see the sun gun highlights alot of pigtailing that still remain in the paint.

A further 5 microns of paint were removed whilst i polished out the remaining sanding marks with 3M Fast Cut Plus @ 1500rpm's to achieve 100% correction:



Scratch gone too:





A few more random areas were attended to before i corrected the rest of the car with Menzerna 106FF and a 3M Polishing Pad @1500rpm's:





LSP was Blackfire Polycharged Wet Diamond which helped give the folowing results, the car now back to how it should have been when handed over:































I've found myself having to stop myself from going into a rant about the local Audi Dealership as we're sick to the back teeth of their **** ups on our customers cars, but i'm sure the above pics do more than enough talking!

I saved the biggest detail for last and this one required a fair bit of work! The car in question (booked in for a 3 day correction) - a pretty rare AC Schnitzer pushing 300bhp! :norty:



I'd got to know the car pretty well as the owner is a good customer of ours and regularly attends our breakfast club meets and open days so I knew what lay ahead. Luckily, the owner had done 99% of the prep work himself to allow me as much time on the paint as possible, so all that was required was a wash and a quick going over of the wheels:



You may or may not have noticed that the side trims were missing. Well, so was quite alot of the interior trim too!





This was because they (along with various other bits and bobs) were in the boot ready to be corrected along with the exterior:



The majority of the car has seen paintwork to rectify a couple of small issues so whilst this was done the owner had the bodyshop paint the interior trim the same colour of the car, hence why they were left off. You were probably thinking that the car already looked pretty good in the before pic and you would be right, well from 10 feet away it did anyways. Up close it was a bit of a mess...

Buffer trails? Check!











Pig Tailing? Check!



Loads of sanding haze and micro marring? Ooooooh yes!













You'll now see why the side trims were removed in order for me to cut right in to the edge of the mouldings and fully remove the sanding marks

The bonnet was the worst though, purely because it looked like it had been machined with a pad that had been laid face down on the workshop floor - although it's hard to fully put across in the pics cos the buffer trails just hid everything underneath!

Bit more pig tailing:









As an added bonus - the original paint wasnt exactly swirl or scratch free either:





Even with 3 days I knew I was going to have my work cut out on this one!

As well as the side trims being removed, I took off all 4 door handles:

The correction work was done with a 3M Compounding Pad and a mix of Ultrafina and Fast Cut Plus @ 1800-2000rpm's:



I started on the bootlid which was original paint:





Then onto the drivers side first:

Before:



After:



Fully corrected:



I used 4" Compounding pads alot on this detail, mainly to cut in tight to the areas the larger pads couldnt reach as the pig tailing was everywhere.

C-Pillar:



The sanding marks were right up to the window rubbers:



This required a couple of hits to fully correct:





The worst affected panels needed at least 2-3 hits to get spot on. Anyone who has had to polish out these kind of defects will know how much of a ball ache it can be at times!

Now down onto the Drivers door - 50/50:



A small section left just to show the difference in clarity:



Fully corrected:





The frustrating thing was that the actual paint job was excellent, considerably better than BMW's in fact with next to no orange peel at all in most places:



Fair enough, the aggressive polishing combination was helping to knock back some of the OP but overall I was very impressed with the paint job, which just made it even more crazy that the bodyshop obviously couldnt be bothered to finish the job off properly

Anyways, back to the polishing:

Lower half (side skirt isnt polished at this stage yet):



Drivers side wing before:



After:



Here's a good example of how close to the swage lines and contours of the car the pig tailing and micromarring was:



I applied a couple of layers of tape as i had to slightly angle the pad and apply quite alot of pressure to get enough bite to remove the defects. Doing it without tape would almost certainly result in striking through the clear coat and more than likely through to the primer too!

After:



Passenger door before:



After:

The Passenger door was probably the worst affected by the micromarring:



A 50/50 shows what kind of colour it should be:



Even with the light facing the other way you can see the difference in clarity:



Fully Corrected:





N/S wing fully corrected:



Onto the rear end...

Before:



After:



Rear bumper 50/50:



Before:



After:



And onto the bonnet:



No messing around here - i went for a Menzerna Compounding Pad. This thing is like concrete and will do serious defect removal when spinning fast enough!



During correction:





Not too hard to see the difference here really!



I cut in to the edges with the 4" pad again:

The bonnet initially looked like it had been machined with gravel such was the depth of some of the defects and it was the one panel on the car I still wasnt happy with at the end. A full wet sand would rectify this and that was explained to the owner that it is an option if he so wishes in future but obviously there just wasnt enough time to do it properly. This was me being picky as it looked 100 times better as the pics show but you could still see some defects under the sun gun or in direct sunlight.

Onto the front of the bonnet now:

There was a paint run in between the grills:



This was sanded flat with Megs 3000 Unigrit and polished up with 3.02:





(that right hand side grill refused to come out so it stayed put for fear of snapping bits )



Before:



After:



While the door handles were off, I machined the recesses with the G220 and a polishing pad/Menz 3.02:



The whole car was then machined again with Menzerna 106FF and a 3M Polishing pad to further refine the finish.

The last night on the car was a late one so Rich helped out too:



Rich also corrected all the various bits and pieces that were in the boot and these were then re-fitted after he'd detailed the interior:







After a thorough dust down I applied the LSP. The owner is a Raceglaze user so the number 55 wax was applied and buffed off after a couple of minutes:



As per usual,after a final wipe down, all that remained was to take some pics to show what over 45 man hours looked like:

Thanks for looking! This was yet another write up that seems to have taken about as long to put together as it did to actually do the cars lol!

Clark