PinnacleAutoCT
New member
- Sep 28, 2014
- 110
- 0
Hey guys, this car belonged to a new customer who was referred to me via a friend in the local Porsche club. It's a 2017 Panamera E-Hybrid, bought new a few weeks prior to the detail. Given that this will be a daily driver, the owner wanted a ceramic coating to keep maintenance to a minimum and protect the paint as much as possible. Unfortunately he contacted me after a few trips through a "Porsche approved" automatic car wash, so the paint had some marring that would require polishing prior to coating. Onto the pics:
Before:
The wheels had a surprising amount of embedded brake dust after just a few weeks of driving:
Sonax Wheel Cleaner Plus making short work of the brake dust:
After a wash and chemical decon with Iron-X, it became a little easier to get the camera to focus on the marring, though these rotary swirls stood out in any lighting:
Aside from the driver's fender and part of the door the marring wasn't terrible, but it still was a shame to see it on a car so new:
Most panels showed straight, horizontal marring that must have been instilled via a vertical drum brush in the car wash:
Given the damage to the paint, the plan was to perform a one-step paint correction process to achieve ~95% correction, then coat the body and wheels with 22ple VX-1 Pro. After testing CarPro Essence, HD Polish, and HD Polish mixed with D300 on various finishing and polishing pads, I was forced to escalate to a mix of Meguiar's M100 and D300 on Lake Country black foam finishing pads. This combo removed the defects after 4-6 passes with slow arm speed and moderate pressure at speed 6 on the Rupes 21 MKII (75E for the tight spots). Surprisingly, the paint was hard enough that this step left the paint almost perfectly refined, but a quick finishing step with HD Polish on LC black pads bumped up the gloss a little, so the whole car was then finished in this manner. After this, the paint was washed and rinsed, then given a double wipe-down with CarPro Eraser. Following this 22ple VX-1 Pro was applied, which really made the metallic flake pop and provided a lot more wetness. A portable heater was used to keep the garage up to temp while this was going on (ambient temps were in the mid-high 40s).
After:
VX-1Pro really made the paint glow without any darkening, so the metallic stood out quite a bit:
Fender and door sans rotary swirls:
I also took these shots outside, though it was a little too overcast to make the metallic visible:
Thanks for looking, comments and questions are welcome!
Before:
The wheels had a surprising amount of embedded brake dust after just a few weeks of driving:
Sonax Wheel Cleaner Plus making short work of the brake dust:
After a wash and chemical decon with Iron-X, it became a little easier to get the camera to focus on the marring, though these rotary swirls stood out in any lighting:
Aside from the driver's fender and part of the door the marring wasn't terrible, but it still was a shame to see it on a car so new:
Most panels showed straight, horizontal marring that must have been instilled via a vertical drum brush in the car wash:
Given the damage to the paint, the plan was to perform a one-step paint correction process to achieve ~95% correction, then coat the body and wheels with 22ple VX-1 Pro. After testing CarPro Essence, HD Polish, and HD Polish mixed with D300 on various finishing and polishing pads, I was forced to escalate to a mix of Meguiar's M100 and D300 on Lake Country black foam finishing pads. This combo removed the defects after 4-6 passes with slow arm speed and moderate pressure at speed 6 on the Rupes 21 MKII (75E for the tight spots). Surprisingly, the paint was hard enough that this step left the paint almost perfectly refined, but a quick finishing step with HD Polish on LC black pads bumped up the gloss a little, so the whole car was then finished in this manner. After this, the paint was washed and rinsed, then given a double wipe-down with CarPro Eraser. Following this 22ple VX-1 Pro was applied, which really made the metallic flake pop and provided a lot more wetness. A portable heater was used to keep the garage up to temp while this was going on (ambient temps were in the mid-high 40s).
After:
VX-1Pro really made the paint glow without any darkening, so the metallic stood out quite a bit:
Fender and door sans rotary swirls:
I also took these shots outside, though it was a little too overcast to make the metallic visible:
Thanks for looking, comments and questions are welcome!
