rms64
New member
- Dec 18, 2012
- 1,122
- 0
Hi everyone,
This weekend I'm working on my friend and co-worker's fiance's car - a Mazda 3 in a metallic dark grey / black color that needs some love. Since his birthday is Sunday (Happy Birthday Alex!) I was asked to see if I could fix it up a bit.
Random background information - this car is affectionately known as "Mia" in honor of Mia Hamm because, well, she's hot.
Anyway, I'll try to document the process here. Gameplan is:
- Clean tires with Amazing Roll Off
- Sonax for the wheels
- DP bug remover on the front bumper / clip - lots of bug damage, some of which may not be fixable
- Foam Wash
- IronX
- Clay
- Compound / Polish based on what the processes above reveal
- Colonite 845 as LSP or maybe Pinnacle Coating - this car lives outside continuously
Here's the car as it arrived:
Etching from tree sap - later I would discover that this stuff was everywhere:
General condition of headlights, need some work:
Needs a wash!
My favorite part of Mia...
A little out of order but using DP Bug wash on the front bumper:
Sonax doing its thing - hard to see. Wheels cleaned with Amazing Roll Off:
Foam wash time - Honeydew in a foam gun:
After IronX, the dreaded sap spots appeared - some were still sticky some are baked on - hard. See my separate thread as I tried to work through this:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/auto-detailing-101/88013-new-one-me-sticky-tree-sap.html
Sample pics of the sap:
The sap is in numerous places and after trying variouis options, mineral spirits seemed to work pretty well.
Tomorrow I'll continue on the exterior, compounding and polishing depending on how things go sap-wise. More to come and thanks for looking.
Rob
This weekend I'm working on my friend and co-worker's fiance's car - a Mazda 3 in a metallic dark grey / black color that needs some love. Since his birthday is Sunday (Happy Birthday Alex!) I was asked to see if I could fix it up a bit.
Random background information - this car is affectionately known as "Mia" in honor of Mia Hamm because, well, she's hot.
Anyway, I'll try to document the process here. Gameplan is:
- Clean tires with Amazing Roll Off
- Sonax for the wheels
- DP bug remover on the front bumper / clip - lots of bug damage, some of which may not be fixable
- Foam Wash
- IronX
- Clay
- Compound / Polish based on what the processes above reveal
- Colonite 845 as LSP or maybe Pinnacle Coating - this car lives outside continuously
Here's the car as it arrived:
Etching from tree sap - later I would discover that this stuff was everywhere:
General condition of headlights, need some work:
Needs a wash!
My favorite part of Mia...
A little out of order but using DP Bug wash on the front bumper:
Sonax doing its thing - hard to see. Wheels cleaned with Amazing Roll Off:
Foam wash time - Honeydew in a foam gun:
After IronX, the dreaded sap spots appeared - some were still sticky some are baked on - hard. See my separate thread as I tried to work through this:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/auto-detailing-101/88013-new-one-me-sticky-tree-sap.html
Sample pics of the sap:
The sap is in numerous places and after trying variouis options, mineral spirits seemed to work pretty well.
Tomorrow I'll continue on the exterior, compounding and polishing depending on how things go sap-wise. More to come and thanks for looking.
Rob
