tuscarora dave
Active member
- Aug 21, 2009
- 5,408
- 12
This X-Terra belongs to a new client and good friend of mine. He calls it "the Shortbus" I am sure you can figure that out. The Shortbus has been to every state in the USA including Alaska, it has also been all over Canada. The owner of the Shortbus is an avid cyclist, mountain biker, BMX racer, runner, hiker, camper, mountain climber, scuba diver and an excellent musician. The short bus has delivered him and his gear to all these venues for 150,000 hard miles. The owner also works around a lot of steel mills so it sees a lot of fallout and rail dust on a pretty much daily basis.
The color made it hard to capture all the defects in the paint in the way of swirls and scratches but it had plenty. The Shortbus also had tons if iron type fallout all over it. It took an entire 100 gram clay bar to get the contaminates out of the paint before the polishing began.
Washed with Meg's Deep Crystal wash
Clayed with S.M. Arnold purple medium clay and Clay Magic Red clay ONR as lube
Plastic, rubber trim and tires cleaned with Citra-Plus Citrus Cleaner full strength
Correction with M-105 Makita rotary Orange LC VC 5.5" pad for Flex Polishers 1000 RPM and yellow Genuine Cyclo 4" cutting pads 1200 RPM
Finished with M-205 Makita rotary Red LC VC 5.5" pad for Flex Polishers 1000 RPM then 600 RPM and Blue Genuine Cyclo 4" finishing pads 1000 RPM then 600 RPM
The stickers were all scraped off the glass except for one sticker then the glass polished with M-105 using my G110V2 and yellow Genuine Cyclo cutting Pad to remove all the oxidation and ghosting from the stickers.
LSP was DG #111
Plastic and rubber coated with Opti-Bond
Interior plastic and carpet was cleaned with Citra-Plus Citrus cleaner 20:1 dilution ratio
The duct tape adhesive was a bit of a challenge, I tried WD-40, Goo Gone and Prep-Sol with no success. I tested some naptha in an underdash area to make sure it would not dissolve the vinyl and it did not so I removed the adhesive with that. I would caution against using naptha though because it did disolve the coating on the black plastic piece that surrounds the instrument cluster so it was removed and painted black satin.
I tried a carpet extraction fluid made from ocean kelp that I picked up at a local discount store on the seats and it worked terrific at 5 ounces per gallon of hot water. I sprayed it on with a garden sprayer and then extracted with my wet dry vac. It took the seats forever to dry as the weather was cool with no real sunshine so I placed a space heater in the vehicle to assist in drying over night.
I lost track of the hours on this job but it was done over 4 days. If I had to guess I would say around 24 hours total.
Here are some before pics of the paint, note the specks of iron in the paint.
Here are a few before pics of the interior.
This job got to be very challenging so this little guy cheered me on.
Once the Shortbus hits the 200,000 mile mark the owner is donating it to one of his favorite charities. So I will have a 2011 Nissan Murano to care for soon.
This is the one sticker that I just couldn't bring myself to scrape off.
Here are a few after pics of the exterior. The weather was total clouds so no real sun shots but the correction was at around 95%.
On to the interior pics.
Thanks for looking, TD
The color made it hard to capture all the defects in the paint in the way of swirls and scratches but it had plenty. The Shortbus also had tons if iron type fallout all over it. It took an entire 100 gram clay bar to get the contaminates out of the paint before the polishing began.
Washed with Meg's Deep Crystal wash
Clayed with S.M. Arnold purple medium clay and Clay Magic Red clay ONR as lube
Plastic, rubber trim and tires cleaned with Citra-Plus Citrus Cleaner full strength
Correction with M-105 Makita rotary Orange LC VC 5.5" pad for Flex Polishers 1000 RPM and yellow Genuine Cyclo 4" cutting pads 1200 RPM
Finished with M-205 Makita rotary Red LC VC 5.5" pad for Flex Polishers 1000 RPM then 600 RPM and Blue Genuine Cyclo 4" finishing pads 1000 RPM then 600 RPM
The stickers were all scraped off the glass except for one sticker then the glass polished with M-105 using my G110V2 and yellow Genuine Cyclo cutting Pad to remove all the oxidation and ghosting from the stickers.
LSP was DG #111
Plastic and rubber coated with Opti-Bond
Interior plastic and carpet was cleaned with Citra-Plus Citrus cleaner 20:1 dilution ratio
The duct tape adhesive was a bit of a challenge, I tried WD-40, Goo Gone and Prep-Sol with no success. I tested some naptha in an underdash area to make sure it would not dissolve the vinyl and it did not so I removed the adhesive with that. I would caution against using naptha though because it did disolve the coating on the black plastic piece that surrounds the instrument cluster so it was removed and painted black satin.
I tried a carpet extraction fluid made from ocean kelp that I picked up at a local discount store on the seats and it worked terrific at 5 ounces per gallon of hot water. I sprayed it on with a garden sprayer and then extracted with my wet dry vac. It took the seats forever to dry as the weather was cool with no real sunshine so I placed a space heater in the vehicle to assist in drying over night.
I lost track of the hours on this job but it was done over 4 days. If I had to guess I would say around 24 hours total.
Here are some before pics of the paint, note the specks of iron in the paint.
Here are a few before pics of the interior.
This job got to be very challenging so this little guy cheered me on.
Once the Shortbus hits the 200,000 mile mark the owner is donating it to one of his favorite charities. So I will have a 2011 Nissan Murano to care for soon.
This is the one sticker that I just couldn't bring myself to scrape off.
Here are a few after pics of the exterior. The weather was total clouds so no real sun shots but the correction was at around 95%.
On to the interior pics.
Thanks for looking, TD
I have to get my hand out of this Cheeto bag and get more active.
