Note to self.... Jettas require JackHammer DA Attachment!

Coach Steve

Coach Steve

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One of my regular customers gave a gift cert. to her sister who owns a 2011 VW Jetta. It's white with black Pleather int. and in relatively good shape. She was really excited and anxious to get it done so it would, "look as pretty as my sister's car when you get done detailing it!". This particular one was a full-boat, all-in, complete bumper to bumper job so I was REALLY happy to see how clean and well-taken-care-of it was.
After washing and claying it, I was already snow blind from staring at the white so long and any attempt to see defects in the CC was futile. I pulled it in the garage and grabbed my Brinkmann. It was fairly average with the basic swirls and an occasional deeper scratch here and there. No sweat!
My plan of attack was to hit it with Meg's UC and a LC orange cc pad, badda-boom, badda-bing and Bob's your uncle. Should have the whole thing compounded in less than an hour! Yeah Right!!
Finished the first section pass, wiped it off and no improvement. Swirls were still there and now the paint is waaaaay shinier than it was so I was basically looking at a snow bank from inside of it. Nothing but glaring white with no hope of focusing on anything with the eyes alone. Puzzled, I re-hit the section with UC and a yellow LC pad. Still nothing. Seriously??!!
Rather than taking a tour through my more aggressive cutting/compounding products till I found one that worked, I decided it would probably be a good idea to go online and find out just exactly what the deal was with Jetta CC.
I'll spare you the details of the rest of the job and the ridiculous amount of time it took. To "nutshell" the rest of the story, I ended up staying with my DA and a yellow pad but used M105 & M205. I was going to jump over to my rotary but I'm not proficient enough with it yet so I stayed with my DA.

Lesson learned: With regard to German cars, newer Jettas, most BMW's and pretty much all Audi's have super hard clear coats. Wasn't able to locate a jack-hammer cutting pad for the DA mfr'd. by anyone so had to rely on liquid products to do the job for me. :D

At the end of the day, it turned out as good or better than I expected - just took a little longer is all. Unfortunately, I only took 2 pics of it and they're both taken post-detail.



Turned the car around so the passenger side was now in the shade. still pops!
 
Very nice work! Looks awesome! And I'm jealous of your weather! It's in the 30's here with rain and snow coming this week! :-(
 
Looks beautiful, I would recommend grabbing some mf cutting disks.
 
Wes Bremec said:
Looks beautiful, I would recommend grabbing some mf cutting disks.
Click to expand...

True to this, M105 and 205 work great with foam pads, but even better with microfiber pads. I like the meguiars microfiber pads as they have a good amount of cut, but last longer than foam
 
The white really pops! Great job!
 
Strange. My 2012 GTI chips really easily. I was thinking the clear coat and paint were all super thin and weak.

Looks great!
 
Hi, nice topic. Beautiful work indeed, that white looks wonderful now.

I can feel your 'pain', I've dealt with hard paints like this before... UC + Orange Pad, and just a 'glossy swirled' result. In my case it was a Toyota, that people relate have generally soft paint. This is one more example to illustrate what Mike Phillips always say: every paint is different (or something like this).


MF pad solved in my case, but as you've said, a stronger compound also helped.

Looks like MF Pads and M101 compound is a must for who is trying to correct hard paints with only a DA.

Thank you for posting,

Kind Regards.
 
dbizzle22 said:
Strange. My 2012 GTI chips really easily. I was thinking the clear coat and paint were all super thin and weak.

Looks great!
Click to expand...

Hard CC is the reason why your paint is easily chipped! A softer CC will not chip nearly as easily as hard CC.
 
Dont stare too long after cause you will go even more snow blind! That is one nice looking Jetta man, I bet shes enthralled!
 
Looks good man, sometimes we get a car that drives us insane.
Keep practicing with your rotary, in this case it would have been very helpful.
Bottom line is that you got the job done and nicely done at that.
 
You sure it's not single stage? Some modern white cars are SS, they would be particularly hard.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Whenever I work with a white vehicle I put on a pair of welding goggles with a higher transmission lens. It cuts out 90% off all light and all the UV.
It is designed for gas welding, not arc. It is a grade 2 lens. You can get lenses up to and beyond grade 14

As I got older it would take my eyes longer and longer to return to normal after looking at white paint, close up in sunlight.
 
Nice job. I agree with others on have some MF pads for harder clear. M105 works great with the Meg's MF cutting pads.
 
Take some comfort in knowing that you're not the only one who finds Jetta paint difficult to correct. I have a 2003 Jetta, and when I first got into detailing, its paint was in bad condition, with layers of baked-on hard water spots after being parked outside unprotected from the hot sun for a couple years.

I initially tried an orange pad and GG polishes, then moved to a yellow pad and UC on a GG6. It looked a little improved, but bad etching still remained. As a newbie, I was very discouraged and wondered if the paint was even correctable anymore. But I later tried again, and with each compounding or polishing session it got better. I think it took me about 4 compounding sessions to get it to a point where it looked acceptable.

A few nights ago, I polished out a panel in preparation for a coating. This panel had some long scratches in it from abrading the paint with the coin-op car wash brush over the years, and I didn't expect to get most of them out. As a daily driver I was willing to accept leaving some scratches in because I wanted to preserve the clear coat. So I used Menzerna SI1500 polish (which I had just bought and never tried before) on an orange LC pad with a Flex 3401 on speed 5. To my surprise, this combo actually got 95%+ of the scratches out.
 
The bulk of my details are on VW's, Audi's and Seats, and yes, most have hard clears (but not all). I haven't yet detailed a white jetta, although have done a lot of Candy white Golf's and polos

I have always trusted my Menzerna polishes for the job. My regular combo was FG400/Orange pad and that gave me the the results I was looking for on most of them. There have been a few Audi's though that needed FG400/MF pads, but none of the white VW's...

I have just finished doing a Candy White Polo and landed up trying out Scholls S3 Gold on a LC tangerine pad and managed to get most of the swirls out. Was really impressed with this polish.

Do you know the paint code of your Jetta's paint? I am eager to see what shade of white it is, so that I know for any that may come through the door, what to expect in terms of 'hardness'
 
Thanks everyone for the compliments, kind words, tips and the suggestions. To answer a few questions...
Yes, it's definitely CC and not SS paint.
The car belongs to a customer so getting the paint code from that particular Jetta would be difficult at best.

As for the suggestions... I'm definitely going to be adding a few MF pads to my next order as well as spending a little more behind the trigger of my rotary. Would have cut the time in half I think.

Thanks again! Now it's on to the next all white job - only bigger, but brand spankin' new. My neighbor (the one who's black truck I revived from the swirl Hell... see this thread: http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/auto-detailing-101/74607-fun-one-not.html) traded in his black truck for a big, new Ram 2500 Super Cab and I'll be spending the day tomorrow un-swirling and shining it up.
 
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