richy
New member
- Mar 27, 2007
- 5,158
- 0
This car belongs to a friend of mine. He has had it for years and I've polished it out for him before. Unfortunately, it has seen a lot of auto car washes and the scratches from the brushes were on every panel. I tried doing a short video walk around examination both before and after, but I'm not happy the way they turned out. I probably won't be doing it again. The before especially shows absolutely none of the scratches, just the washed out lights. Oh well, live and learn.
The other thing I did with this car was to log the time spent on each step to give an idea how long things take (me).
Here is the car as it arrived to me:
There were a couple of areas in dire need of some serious attention:
First up as always was the wheels, barrels, wells and tires.
First the wheels get treated to IronX. I ran out of my bottle on the 3rd wheel and tried my new Wolf`s Decon Gel. No discernible difference to me.
The wheels were followed up with Zep Citrus on the face and barrels as well as the wells. The tires were cleaned with Zep Purple. Tarminator was used where needed as well.
The car was then foamed with a strong mix of DG901 and Dawn to remove any wax.
That was followed by a hand wash of the same mix of 901 and Dawn. The car was then brought inside wet to clay with Elastofoam and ONR as lube. It was dried off completely after.
This is when I shot the first walk around inspection video. I guess it`s better than nothing; skip it if you figure it`s wasting your time:
Now, at this point I had 3 hours into the car already. Next up was the wheels. I spent 1.25 hours hand polishing them with D300 and a mf and then wiping them down with ERASER and coating them with OG. You can see how much OG I used just on the wheels alone:
Paint Correction:
For such a big car, I was really hoping I`d be able to bang off a 2 step process on it. No such luck. This is what I tried first on the hood:
M105 + yellow B/S pad
M105 + black TB wool
ended up using FG500 + TB black wool. That got the scratches out, but it was not pretty to look at. I followed that up with M105 and yellow B/S which made it beautiful and then the crowning glory was M205 and a white B/S pad. I also tried the DG paint cleaner on several panels using a red LCC pad and my Megs DA at speed 4. The more I use it, the more I like it. Here's the hood taped up and ready for the winning combo to be found:
Here's two 50/50 shots:
Once the polishing was done, then I attended to all the paint chips and scuffs. I used either a pointy toothpick or the mini brushes I get off ebay.
Between 3 stages of polishing and touch ups, I spent 12 hours on this stage alone!
A few of the doors had been painted, and there was a mess of a lot of the seams. I cleaned them up as well as I could, but it was frustrating to see.
The paint and glass area was then sealed in with OG. That process (including cleaning prep) took 2 hours. You can see how much OG I ended up using on the whole car:
The other thing I did with this car was to log the time spent on each step to give an idea how long things take (me).
Here is the car as it arrived to me:
There were a couple of areas in dire need of some serious attention:
First up as always was the wheels, barrels, wells and tires.
First the wheels get treated to IronX. I ran out of my bottle on the 3rd wheel and tried my new Wolf`s Decon Gel. No discernible difference to me.
The wheels were followed up with Zep Citrus on the face and barrels as well as the wells. The tires were cleaned with Zep Purple. Tarminator was used where needed as well.
The car was then foamed with a strong mix of DG901 and Dawn to remove any wax.
That was followed by a hand wash of the same mix of 901 and Dawn. The car was then brought inside wet to clay with Elastofoam and ONR as lube. It was dried off completely after.
This is when I shot the first walk around inspection video. I guess it`s better than nothing; skip it if you figure it`s wasting your time:
Now, at this point I had 3 hours into the car already. Next up was the wheels. I spent 1.25 hours hand polishing them with D300 and a mf and then wiping them down with ERASER and coating them with OG. You can see how much OG I used just on the wheels alone:
Paint Correction:
For such a big car, I was really hoping I`d be able to bang off a 2 step process on it. No such luck. This is what I tried first on the hood:
M105 + yellow B/S pad
M105 + black TB wool
ended up using FG500 + TB black wool. That got the scratches out, but it was not pretty to look at. I followed that up with M105 and yellow B/S which made it beautiful and then the crowning glory was M205 and a white B/S pad. I also tried the DG paint cleaner on several panels using a red LCC pad and my Megs DA at speed 4. The more I use it, the more I like it. Here's the hood taped up and ready for the winning combo to be found:
Here's two 50/50 shots:
Once the polishing was done, then I attended to all the paint chips and scuffs. I used either a pointy toothpick or the mini brushes I get off ebay.
Between 3 stages of polishing and touch ups, I spent 12 hours on this stage alone!
A few of the doors had been painted, and there was a mess of a lot of the seams. I cleaned them up as well as I could, but it was frustrating to see.
The paint and glass area was then sealed in with OG. That process (including cleaning prep) took 2 hours. You can see how much OG I ended up using on the whole car:
rops:
