Polished Bliss: The latest challange...

WX51TXR

Polished Bliss
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Posted on behalf of Clark, who is busy swearing his way through another tough detail on another Porsche!

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It had been a relatively easy start to the week with a couple of maintenence top ups on an Alpina and an RS4 on Monday and Tuesday respectively, but as usual there was bound to be at least one swirly mess before the week was over - and this weeks swirly mess was this Porsche Boxter which arrived on Wednesday morning:


Cboxterj.jpg



The car was an early model and to be honest, it was looking pretty dull and a bit neglected, especially the wheels which were beginning to blister and corrode quite badly:

Cboxterh.jpg



Interior wasnt overly bad but the owner is a smoker so most of the plastics were yellow/brown and didnt smell great either!

Cboxtere.jpg





This one was only booked in for a 2 day correction so i was against the clock the whole time so i got straight to washing it as soon as it arrived. Up first was the pre foam with Hyper Wash @ 60 degrees:

Cboxterc.jpg



This was left for 5 mins before being rinsed off at high pressure:

Cboxter.jpg




I then cleaned up the wheels, firstly using Menzerna 7.5 Tyre and wheel Gel but this got no where with the bonded brake dust (dont think the inner rims had ever been cleaned!) so i used Megs Wheel Brightner cut 4:1. Usually i would avoid this on wheels with open blisters but they could only look better!


Before:

Cboxterh.jpg



After WB and Tardis:

Cboxteri.jpg



Arches/shuts & Petrol cap were soaked with Megs Superdegreaser and pressure washed.

The hood was then gently scrubbed after applying Zym0l Fabrique:

Cboxterk.jpg



I then washed the car with the 2BM and Shampoo Plus and removed some small tar spots with Tardis before putting the car inside for claying.

I used Megs Aggressive Detailing Clay this time:

Cboxterf.jpg




This was followed by a final rinse and i then dried off with a waffle weave towel and blasted out any excess water with the leaf blower.




Polish




The car was taped up ready for polishing:

Cboxtera.jpg




Paint readings were taken next and these revealed that the entire car had been resprayed except for the rear bootlid - in this case it was a good thing as Matt @ OYM informs me that Lapis Blue Boxters are one of those cars with "sticky" paint which causes the polishes to clump up and generally be a pain in the backside!


Just as well there was a healthy amount of paint all round as the defects were rather bad!


Cboxterm.jpg


Cboxtero.jpg


Cboxtern.jpg



ah the joys :rolleyes: :lol:



I started out with Menz 3.02 and an orange compounding pad @ 1800rpm's but after 2 hits i was still left with some RIDS.

Cboxters.jpg



As this was a 2 day detail and not 3 the customer knew that not everything would come out in this time frame and there was a likelyhood of around 90/95% correction (especially on paint as fecked as this!). However i was pretty sure i could improve further on the defects left so i moved up to 3M Fast Cut Plus with a mix of Ultrafina:


Cboxterd.jpg



I worked this @ 2000rpm's as the resprayed paint was very hard:

Cboxterl.jpg



This resulted in much better correction :)


Fast Cut Plus is easily my favourite product right now, it works basically the same as 3.02 under all conditions and finishes down just as well (on harder paints anyways) but has at least twice the cut.

Cboxteru.jpg


It removes considerably more paint though (obviously) and i was removing between 3-4 microns on the Porsche.




For the smaller areas and bumpers i used another new product - a blue 4" compounding pad:

Cboxterg.jpg





Now, generally speaking light coloured cars or ones with lots of flake in the paint dont usually show up defects all that well but i think you may just get how bad the car was when you look at the pic below :D






Cboxterq.jpg


Cboxterp.jpg



I knew there was blue in there somewhere!
 
What was pleasing was that the correction showed above was the result of one hit on the panel, so i was making good progress round the car which made a nice change :)


I aimed to get all the correction work done by the end of the night so carried on round each section:


Before:

Cboxterv.jpg



After:

Cboxterw.jpg





Rear Bumper Before:

Cboxterx.jpg



After:

Cboxtery.jpg





The bootlid (which was original paint) was very akward and in the end i gave up with the rotary and switched over to the Megs G220 and a 4" compouding pad with FCP (seems Matt was right about Lapis Blue being "sticky"!). A bit of patience with the orbital still gets the desired results:

Cboxterz.jpg





I finally got all the correction work done by 10pm so i headed home :)



Day 2:



Thursday morning began with a 2nd machine stage to refine the finish further. As time was still an issue i went for Ultrafina on a 3M finishing pad as you can work it faster than the Menz polishes (in my opinion anyways):

Cboxterb.jpg





I completed this step by lunch time and as the customer left it up to me to decide what to apply as LSP i went for Blackfire's Midnight Sun, purely for the fact its so easy to use, so this was applied to the whole car and left to cure:

Cporschec.jpg




The wheels were then sealed (for all it was worth :rolleyes:) and tyres dressed with Blackfire Long Lasting Tyre Gel.


The Exhaust was particularly bad:

Cporsche.jpg



In the end i had to dig out the Dremel and then follow up with Meguiars NXT metal Polish:

Cporschea.jpg
 
I then spent a good hour on the Interior, the process was:

- Thorough hoover
- Shampoo mats
- Wipe down all surfaces with Megs APC 4:1 to remove tobacco staining and remove smell!
- Cleaned leather with APC 10:1
- pedals cleaned with APC 4:1
- Glass cleaned with Megs Glass Cleaner Concentrate
- Leather fed with Zym0l Treat
- Shuts protected with Jeffs Prime Strong


Couple of afters:


Cporschei.jpg


Cporscher.jpg




The wax was then buffed off before i took the after pics - Total work time = 21 hours :cool:




Cporsched.jpg


Cporschee.jpg


Cporschef.jpg


Cporscheg.jpg


Cporscheh.jpg


Cporschej.jpg


Cporschem.jpg


Cporschep.jpg


Cporscheq.jpg


Cporsches.jpg


Cporschet.jpg


Cporscheo.jpg


Cporschen.jpg


Cporschel.jpg


Cporschek.jpg


Cporscheb.jpg


Thanks for looking :icon_thumright:

Clark
 
That is an amazing difference...
Probably one of the 'best' I've seen you do...chalk and cheese.
Well done, and thanks for posting the pics.
 
That was one rotten Boxster, the owner must have discount vouchers for the local garage drive through machine wash.

As always, a fantastic job, great write up and great pictures.

You said that it was a 2 day detail, at the end your hours added up to 21 hours, does that still count as two days, surely not?
 
yeah, I agree with Ess... thats pretty fricking amazin...

almost made me think I'd drive all the way up if I need to to you guys!

Wonder if I could mix it with some work sometime!!??!? ;)
 
yeah, I agree with Ess... thats pretty fricking amazin...

almost made me think I'd drive all the way up if I need to to you guys!

Wonder if I could mix it with some work sometime!!??!? ;)


Thinking exactly the same thing and I'm in Bristol !!!!!!
 
That was one rotten Boxster, the owner must have discount vouchers for the local garage drive through machine wash.

As always, a fantastic job, great write up and great pictures.

You said that it was a 2 day detail, at the end your hours added up to 21 hours, does that still count as two days, surely not?

Yes, but as from the moment our diary reopens next week, such details will now be booked in for 3 days and charged accordingly. Can't go on doing 20 odd hours in 2 days and only charging for 2 days, otherwise we'll never be able to save up for a new unit. :icon_thumright:
 

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