Polished Bliss: UK Gloss-It Debut

Done by Clark last week, posted by me as he's too busy working on an M3!

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This detail was a 3 day correction detail carried out at the end of this week and I'm afraid to say it was a case of fixing someone else's mess from the dealership yet again (those that are regular readers of our details will know that alot of recent work has come from poor dealership prep, etc).

It was also an opportunity to put to use some of the Gloss-It products that we are going to be taking stock of next week - our first new line in quite a while, fresh from Las Vegas in the USA.

The car in question was this rather nice Supercharged Elise, which looks great in red - not many in this colour going around!



Already in the morning sun there was evidence of paint defects:







But before I can do anything about them I have to get the car washed, so up first with the pre-foam - Hyper Wash @ 60 degrees and left for 5 minutes:



Then rinsed off:



The wheels were sprayed with Menzerna 7.5 Tyre and Wheel Gel and then agitated with various brushes:



The arches and tyres were also scrubbed with a new high strength APC currently on test:



The shuts and exterior trim were cleaned with the same APC and a brush before rinsing:



Although not really needing it, the hood was cleaned just to be on the safe side:



After the roof was thoroughly rinsed, I washed the car with the 2BM and Gloss-It Gloss Shampoo (love the smell of this stuff!):



Tardis was then used to remove any minor tar spots, including the inner arch lips:

Before:



After:



Another quick rinse followed and I then put the car inside for claying.

Another Gloss-It product for this, the green mild:





This was about as dirty as the clay got:



I then dried the car off with one of our new drying towels:

Now dry, it was time to properly inspect the paint with the 3M Sun Gun.

This revealed signs of previous heavy machine polishing with no refining what so ever:











Sanding micro marring:













There was also quite alot of RIDS and the odd scuff etc:



The usual bits were removed to help make polishing a bit easier:



The paint gauge was checked for accuracy...



...and then used to determine how much paint I had to play with (no metal panels on an elise so the composites gauge was used):



The readings revealed healthy levels all round with no signs of previous paint work.

After playing about with pad and polish combinations (106FA and menz 3.02 were tried but didn’t quite remove the deeper stuff) I settled on Gloss-It Evolution Extreme Cut. I've been using this quite alot recently and it's comparable to the likes of 3M Fast Cut Plus. The Gloss-It polishes are designed to work with Dual Action machines but I’ve grown to really like the Extreme Cut with the Rotary.

I worked the polish with a 3M Polishing Pad @ 1500rpm's, continually checking panel temperatures:



Result:



I wasn’t overly bothered about finishing down all that well so in some of the other correction shots you'll see some light buffer trails courtesy of myself

Some more correction shots, in no particular order I should add:

Rear bumper before:



After:

50/50 rear end:



Spoiler before:



After:



Front bumper before:



During:



After:



Before:



After:



3" 3M Pads were used at various times for the tighter to reach areas:







Door shut before:



During:



After:



Lower front bumper:



During:



After:



Door fully corrected:





With the Correction work all completed, I then refined the finish further with Menzerna PO85RD and a 3M finishing pad.

The armour fend on the lower back 1/4 was polished up with Blackfire Gloss Enhancing Polish:



This brought the total polishing time to just over 20 hours, which included a 10:30pm finish on Thursday night.

The Elise isn’t a big car but there is alot of paint to polish and a huge amount of awkward sections to break up so they can be polished properly, hence why the correction stage can take so long.

The car was then dusted down with a wool duster and I used masking tape to clean up the hood, which was then protected with 303 and left to dry while the rest of the car was finished:



The paintwork was then given a full wipe down with Menzerna Top Inspection to remove any polishing oils:

















LSP was the new Gloss-It products. There are several to choose from but I opted to go with Signature Gloss first:



Please note that this is not the bottles that the product comes in. These are just the sample bottles Rich from Gloss-It sent us to let us decide if we thought they were good or not (luckily we thought they were!).

The SG was applied by the G220 and a glazing pad. It can be applied either by hand or machine but I prefer the machine for some reason. The hard to reach areas were done by hand though:



Once buffed off, I topped the Signature Gloss off with Concorso Gloss - again applied via the G220:



The wheels had been sealed the day before by Marsha (who had polished up the tailpipe nicely too) so it was a case of dusting them down and then applying Gloss-It's Tyre dressing.

I've grown to love this product too, you just lightly mist it onto the tyre wall...



...then after 5 mins and a quick wipe round with an applicator it leaves them looking like this:



The tyres received 2 coats of the dressing, one at the beginning of the detail and one near the end.

The interior was given a quick going over too, including a bit of spot cleaning with the Gloss-It leather cleaner and then fed:



The inside glass was cleaned with Eimann Fabrik and the outside glass/headlights were treated to Rain-X. All interior surfaces were wiped down with APC and the mats were given a light shampoo.





The last step to complete the detail was one final wipe down of the paintwork using Gloss-It gloss Enhancer QD:



After using this for around a month now, I can safely say it is now my most favourite QD - As you can probably tell from how much is left!

The owner turned up just as I was giving the car it's final wipe down so we didn’t get as many pictures as I'd have liked, but here's the best of what we got (some are taken with my camera and some taken with Rich's):

































By now you'll all know that I give an honest opinion and review of products so hopefully you won't see this as a blatant plug just to push this new line, and at the end of the day - if they weren't good enough, we wouldn’t be using or selling them!

Thanks for taking the time to read,

Clark

Toxic said:

very nice Richard. I'm surious as to my options when my Menzerna range goes. On a comparison to Blackfire products, what would you suggest going for. My Altea's colour is Black Magic - or Ink Black (More like a dark Grey metallic tbh) Is Gloss It any good for Dark Metallics or should I stay with your recommended ranges posted here: What to use and why on darker metallic finishes

Click to expand...

Hmm, I've just googled the colour, and given a fresh start, my choice would be the Blackfire twins (Wet Diamond All Finish Paint Protection topped with multiple coats of Midnight Sun Ivory Carnauba Paste Wax). It's not a colour that you can really go wrong on, so other options like Werkstat Acrylic (for maximum flake pop) and the Gloss It twins (Gloss Finish topped with a coat of Concorso Gloss for a silky shimmer) will wotk well, but Blackfire gets my No.1 vote. Worth checking the darker metallics guide mind for an overview of the existing options. :icon_thumright:

Yes, just as easy in every way.