lawrenceSA
New member
- Feb 7, 2012
- 1,713
- 0
I received a call from a good mate of mine Sean early last week asking if I would be able to get his paint looking a bit better by 07:00 Saturday morning for a planned photoshoot. I knew I would still be busy with the Rising Blue Golf R on Mon/Tue so I asked Sean to bring his car around on Wed night.
The plan was to remove all the stickers on Wed night, wash and clay the car on Thursday night and to the do a 1 step cleaner wax polish followed by a glaze on Friday night.
When he arrived on Wed night it was quite obvious just how poor a condition the paint was in. Absolutely no sign of beading with the water literally sticking to the heavily contaminated paintwork.
These stickers proved to be the most sticky I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Once they were all removed I spent the better part of 10 minutes trying to get them into the bin, but they kept sticking to my fingers :lol: Goo-gone was used to deal with any remaining residue.



Thursday night the car was pre-foamed then washed

Although the initial scope of work only included claying to decontaminate the paint, it was so bad that I decided to use Iron Out to remove as much of the ferrous contamination as I could.... this car smokes like crazy (thanks to the bigger turbo set up and custom software he wrote himself), which really does nothing to aid the contamination problem. Once de-ironed I spent the rest of Thursday night claying with Clay Magic Blue Clay.
After completing about a third of the cleaner wax polish on Friday night, I got a call from Sean who confirmed that the photoshoot had been postponed due to the horrid weather, and so we made a call to try and eek out as much shine as possible on a limited timeline and budget. A change in approach was then made - 3 passes of Ultimate Compound followed by 2 with Menzerna SF4000.
A lot of you may have read how, when correcting a darker color car the compound used will actually leave behind its own fine sanding marks in the paint, robbing you of potential gloss if a follow up polish is not done.
Well I finally had the opportunity to show this on Sean's car....
Here you can see I have corrected the LHS using Megs Ultimate Compound only.... and whilst it has removed the swirls, you can see how the paint actually looks less black than the uncorrected side....

Now in this pic, I corrected using Ultimate Compound and then did a final polish using SF4000. Notice now how the gloss has been restored and the corrected side is a lot more black than the uncorrected side.

Once correction was completed (the tailights were given the same treatment) the entire vehicle was give a coat of Chemical Guys Black Light, the wheels given a quick 1 step using Meguiars Cleaner Wax and the tires dressed using Optimum Optibond tire gel. The windows were given a final wipe down and the rubber and plastic trim dressed.
Unfortunately due to the bad weather I was unable to snap and real after pics, except for these 3 when he left my place. Hopefully once the shoot is done, Sean will send me those pics and I will come and post them here....


And as a point of departure.... this is a reminder of how the water was behaving on his paint:
On arrival

And on Departure

Total time spent = 12 hours
Thanks for looking
The plan was to remove all the stickers on Wed night, wash and clay the car on Thursday night and to the do a 1 step cleaner wax polish followed by a glaze on Friday night.
When he arrived on Wed night it was quite obvious just how poor a condition the paint was in. Absolutely no sign of beading with the water literally sticking to the heavily contaminated paintwork.

These stickers proved to be the most sticky I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Once they were all removed I spent the better part of 10 minutes trying to get them into the bin, but they kept sticking to my fingers :lol: Goo-gone was used to deal with any remaining residue.



Thursday night the car was pre-foamed then washed

Although the initial scope of work only included claying to decontaminate the paint, it was so bad that I decided to use Iron Out to remove as much of the ferrous contamination as I could.... this car smokes like crazy (thanks to the bigger turbo set up and custom software he wrote himself), which really does nothing to aid the contamination problem. Once de-ironed I spent the rest of Thursday night claying with Clay Magic Blue Clay.
After completing about a third of the cleaner wax polish on Friday night, I got a call from Sean who confirmed that the photoshoot had been postponed due to the horrid weather, and so we made a call to try and eek out as much shine as possible on a limited timeline and budget. A change in approach was then made - 3 passes of Ultimate Compound followed by 2 with Menzerna SF4000.
A lot of you may have read how, when correcting a darker color car the compound used will actually leave behind its own fine sanding marks in the paint, robbing you of potential gloss if a follow up polish is not done.
Well I finally had the opportunity to show this on Sean's car....
Here you can see I have corrected the LHS using Megs Ultimate Compound only.... and whilst it has removed the swirls, you can see how the paint actually looks less black than the uncorrected side....

Now in this pic, I corrected using Ultimate Compound and then did a final polish using SF4000. Notice now how the gloss has been restored and the corrected side is a lot more black than the uncorrected side.

Once correction was completed (the tailights were given the same treatment) the entire vehicle was give a coat of Chemical Guys Black Light, the wheels given a quick 1 step using Meguiars Cleaner Wax and the tires dressed using Optimum Optibond tire gel. The windows were given a final wipe down and the rubber and plastic trim dressed.
Unfortunately due to the bad weather I was unable to snap and real after pics, except for these 3 when he left my place. Hopefully once the shoot is done, Sean will send me those pics and I will come and post them here....


And as a point of departure.... this is a reminder of how the water was behaving on his paint:
On arrival

And on Departure

Total time spent = 12 hours
Thanks for looking