Wills.WindowsAndWheels
New member
- Oct 31, 2009
- 1,682
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Well for those of you who read my Panamera write up a month or so ago: http://www.autopia.org/forum/click-...ction-engine-interior-our-first-200k-car.html
This is would be the Ferrari i made mention of in that write up. This was a dream to do. Not only was it a beautiful exotic in our favorite color for a Ferrari, it was also a perfect example of why even 'detailed' cars are not usually up to par with what we consider...detailed.
Here she was waiting for us:
The lesson to be learned from this baby was, what looks good from afar does not always look good up close. While the Italia was quite clean (with the exception of the wheels and some spots on the engine), it was apparently very well waxed too, as the water beaded up very nicely when we went to wash it and the paint was pretty slick too. The owner also had it detailed quite often, but even with all that, it didn't meet our standards. What standards? Well, these...
Welcome to the wonderful world of swirls folks. These little guys don't care if you're a Ferrari or a Fiat, they will show up with no problem over time if your ride is not properly cared for. When i say cared for that includes things as simple as washing, the wrong technique as well as using dirty mitts/water/towels will eventually scratch the paint and leave you with these. So like i said, what looked beautiful from far away, was a bit more flawed when inspected up close in direct light (in this case the sun).
In our book of standards, these are not acceptable. While they take a great deal of time, knowledge and skill to remove...it is very possible...which we will show soon enough. But for now, a few more photos of the swirls.....
These little guys covered the hood:
Whether it was in the clear bra as seen in the photo above..or in the paint itself as seen in the photo below:
The look was still the same, very swirled. But thats ok, we were there to fix that.
Of course the first thing we did was inspect the paint. The car was in pretty good shape with the exception of a couple rock chip hits that tore into the clear bra up front, other than that it was good to go.
Next we took pictures to document the condition of the car before we did any work to it. Some are shown above, here are a few others:
These were pretty deep:
The back around the FERRARI emblem was also in pretty bad shape:
And of course we had some break dust built up in the wheels. No surprise, look at the size of those breaks!
And as i said, the engine was a bit dusty, not really bad at all but, had some room for improvement for sure:
The owners pet peeves were the slots around the plastic pieces on the sides of the engine, the lettering on the engine itself...and the glass that separated the engine bay from the interior of the car. Any dirt on those areas stood out like a sore thumb to him so he asked that we pay special attention to those areas, which of course we did.
You can see a light layer of Arizona dust had settled onto the entire bay.
Here you can better see the plastic vents on the side that he war referring to.
After a careful cleaning of the bay along dressing the plastic and rubber for protection and helping to darken everything back up, we got it back to how it should look:
A closer look:
I prefer doing the engine first as it can sometime be a little messy. Nothing crazy but, it is possible for a little water to hit the body of the car during the process, so the engine is done first that way any mess made on the body is taken care of during the wash. No sense in washing the car first and then getting it dirty again.
The thing with this Ferrari however is, the glass that covered the engine is not air tight (for cooling reasons I'm assuming) so, while washing, some water did manage to drip into the bay. Not a big deal, just had to go back and wipe it up...but that is why it is important to pay attention to what you're doing. If we were to 'finish' the detail and then show the owner the engine and it had water run spots/drips all over, that would not look very good...just a note.
Next we cleaned the tires and rims, getting the dirtiest job done first, again, so we don't chance slinging grime onto clean paint.
Then we pressure washed the loose dirt off. Personally, pressure washing is a big plus in my book, as long as it is done carefully it can really help to get cracks and crevices clean that would other wise be very very difficult to get completely spotless, which is what we were aiming for
Removing the license plate is a must to insure the dirt hidden behind it is removed and to allow access to the paint behind it so that it too can be polished.
After the pressure wash, the car is foamed and allowed to set to help loosen the dirt that is left over. Then a hand wash is performed. With the foam helping to loosen the dirt, it makes for a much safer wash with fewer chances of the dirt needing extra agitation to be removed. This helps lower the chance of instilling more swirls.
After washing and then rinsing, we pulled her back into the garage, carefully dried her and then clayed the entire vehicle, glass and all. There wasn't a TON of bonded contaminants on the paint, but there was enough, which is why we always clay before polishing...we don't want to risk dragging those contaminants around on the paint with our polishers.
Now that the surface was prepped, it was time to re-inspect the paint under the lights we would be using inside the garage...
Here was the chip in the clear bra i spoke of earlier:
More swirls:
Some nice deep ones here:
Ouch...
We obviously had our work cut out for us. First up would be compounding the paint. This would be an aggressive step to eliminate all the swirls and scratches seen in the paint. This is usually my job:
If i look hot, its because i was. Please forgive the tank top but, we were in a closed garage in Arizona where the temp. was well above 100 degrees...and then on top of that, we had these things beaming ontop of us:
1,000 watts of hell right on our backs. BUT, they were needed to properly see the paint and to make sure our work was coming out the way we wanted it to.
After my compounding step, my sister will usually do the polishing step. This eliminates any haze or micro marring left from the compounding step...most eye's won't see it but, ours do.
Intense...
Pad flat, slow movement, even pressure
This is would be the Ferrari i made mention of in that write up. This was a dream to do. Not only was it a beautiful exotic in our favorite color for a Ferrari, it was also a perfect example of why even 'detailed' cars are not usually up to par with what we consider...detailed.
Here she was waiting for us:
The lesson to be learned from this baby was, what looks good from afar does not always look good up close. While the Italia was quite clean (with the exception of the wheels and some spots on the engine), it was apparently very well waxed too, as the water beaded up very nicely when we went to wash it and the paint was pretty slick too. The owner also had it detailed quite often, but even with all that, it didn't meet our standards. What standards? Well, these...
Welcome to the wonderful world of swirls folks. These little guys don't care if you're a Ferrari or a Fiat, they will show up with no problem over time if your ride is not properly cared for. When i say cared for that includes things as simple as washing, the wrong technique as well as using dirty mitts/water/towels will eventually scratch the paint and leave you with these. So like i said, what looked beautiful from far away, was a bit more flawed when inspected up close in direct light (in this case the sun).
In our book of standards, these are not acceptable. While they take a great deal of time, knowledge and skill to remove...it is very possible...which we will show soon enough. But for now, a few more photos of the swirls.....
These little guys covered the hood:
Whether it was in the clear bra as seen in the photo above..or in the paint itself as seen in the photo below:
The look was still the same, very swirled. But thats ok, we were there to fix that.
Of course the first thing we did was inspect the paint. The car was in pretty good shape with the exception of a couple rock chip hits that tore into the clear bra up front, other than that it was good to go.
Next we took pictures to document the condition of the car before we did any work to it. Some are shown above, here are a few others:
These were pretty deep:
The back around the FERRARI emblem was also in pretty bad shape:
And of course we had some break dust built up in the wheels. No surprise, look at the size of those breaks!
And as i said, the engine was a bit dusty, not really bad at all but, had some room for improvement for sure:
The owners pet peeves were the slots around the plastic pieces on the sides of the engine, the lettering on the engine itself...and the glass that separated the engine bay from the interior of the car. Any dirt on those areas stood out like a sore thumb to him so he asked that we pay special attention to those areas, which of course we did.
You can see a light layer of Arizona dust had settled onto the entire bay.
Here you can better see the plastic vents on the side that he war referring to.
After a careful cleaning of the bay along dressing the plastic and rubber for protection and helping to darken everything back up, we got it back to how it should look:
A closer look:
I prefer doing the engine first as it can sometime be a little messy. Nothing crazy but, it is possible for a little water to hit the body of the car during the process, so the engine is done first that way any mess made on the body is taken care of during the wash. No sense in washing the car first and then getting it dirty again.
The thing with this Ferrari however is, the glass that covered the engine is not air tight (for cooling reasons I'm assuming) so, while washing, some water did manage to drip into the bay. Not a big deal, just had to go back and wipe it up...but that is why it is important to pay attention to what you're doing. If we were to 'finish' the detail and then show the owner the engine and it had water run spots/drips all over, that would not look very good...just a note.
Next we cleaned the tires and rims, getting the dirtiest job done first, again, so we don't chance slinging grime onto clean paint.
Then we pressure washed the loose dirt off. Personally, pressure washing is a big plus in my book, as long as it is done carefully it can really help to get cracks and crevices clean that would other wise be very very difficult to get completely spotless, which is what we were aiming for
Removing the license plate is a must to insure the dirt hidden behind it is removed and to allow access to the paint behind it so that it too can be polished.
After the pressure wash, the car is foamed and allowed to set to help loosen the dirt that is left over. Then a hand wash is performed. With the foam helping to loosen the dirt, it makes for a much safer wash with fewer chances of the dirt needing extra agitation to be removed. This helps lower the chance of instilling more swirls.
After washing and then rinsing, we pulled her back into the garage, carefully dried her and then clayed the entire vehicle, glass and all. There wasn't a TON of bonded contaminants on the paint, but there was enough, which is why we always clay before polishing...we don't want to risk dragging those contaminants around on the paint with our polishers.
Now that the surface was prepped, it was time to re-inspect the paint under the lights we would be using inside the garage...
Here was the chip in the clear bra i spoke of earlier:
More swirls:
Some nice deep ones here:
Ouch...
We obviously had our work cut out for us. First up would be compounding the paint. This would be an aggressive step to eliminate all the swirls and scratches seen in the paint. This is usually my job:
If i look hot, its because i was. Please forgive the tank top but, we were in a closed garage in Arizona where the temp. was well above 100 degrees...and then on top of that, we had these things beaming ontop of us:
1,000 watts of hell right on our backs. BUT, they were needed to properly see the paint and to make sure our work was coming out the way we wanted it to.
After my compounding step, my sister will usually do the polishing step. This eliminates any haze or micro marring left from the compounding step...most eye's won't see it but, ours do.
Intense...
Pad flat, slow movement, even pressure
, sorry, not a professional video shooter just yet..it was the bright sun reflection that caused the lines...sorry about that...but you still get the idea right lol?
