lawrenceSA
New member
- Feb 7, 2012
- 1,713
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The owner of this particular car was wanting to sell it and contacted me to give it a quick clean up. The car was originally detailed by me in June last year http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/show-n-shine/51108-98-corolla-detailed-lawrence.html so we were not looking at another full detail.
Despite being fully booked I agreed to help the owner out and tackled this one in the evening's after work during the course of last week, finishing off on Saturday morning.
Unfortunately the owner had, in his own words 'become lazy' and as such the paintwork was pretty much back to square one, and in some places was a lot worse off than when I initially received it for its first detail. On top of this his car had been on the receiving end of some rather horrid over-spray when someone else's car was sprayed in the near vicinity.
The wheels received the usual 'wash, de-tar, de-iron, seal and dress tires process', but no pics were taken due to the limited time I had on this car. Then after an initial wash I removed all the tar and iron deposits and then removed the remaining contamination using clay.
With the car now clean I got to work sorting out the paint. These cars have pretty soft paint and this combined with 1) my understanding of what was done to the paint in the first detail 2) the areas of failing clear coat I noticed when claying and 3) the desired outcome (i.e. a quick clean up as opposed to full on paint correction) I decided to use Meguiars Cleaner Wax, thereby allowing a true 1-step (i.e. clean, polish and protect all in 1 easy step).
Here is what the paint looked like under the lights
So I started polishing and here are the results....the left side has been done, the right side untouched
Here you can see the clear coat failing
A lot of deep chips were found all over the car
The bootlid was particularly bad
Taped up
And the amazing difference some cleaner wax on a cutting pad can make on softer paint
A close up of the tapeline.
The difference dressing tires makes
before
After
Lastly the glass surfaces were cleaned and all the exterior trim dressed.
Here are the after shots from Saturday morning
Not perfect but a lot better than what it was, and should sell a bit easier (and hopefully for a bit more too). There were however still some serious etching marks all over the car.
Total time spent = 12 hours
Thanks for looking and any comments are welcome.
Despite being fully booked I agreed to help the owner out and tackled this one in the evening's after work during the course of last week, finishing off on Saturday morning.
Unfortunately the owner had, in his own words 'become lazy' and as such the paintwork was pretty much back to square one, and in some places was a lot worse off than when I initially received it for its first detail. On top of this his car had been on the receiving end of some rather horrid over-spray when someone else's car was sprayed in the near vicinity.
The wheels received the usual 'wash, de-tar, de-iron, seal and dress tires process', but no pics were taken due to the limited time I had on this car. Then after an initial wash I removed all the tar and iron deposits and then removed the remaining contamination using clay.
With the car now clean I got to work sorting out the paint. These cars have pretty soft paint and this combined with 1) my understanding of what was done to the paint in the first detail 2) the areas of failing clear coat I noticed when claying and 3) the desired outcome (i.e. a quick clean up as opposed to full on paint correction) I decided to use Meguiars Cleaner Wax, thereby allowing a true 1-step (i.e. clean, polish and protect all in 1 easy step).
Here is what the paint looked like under the lights
So I started polishing and here are the results....the left side has been done, the right side untouched
Here you can see the clear coat failing
A lot of deep chips were found all over the car
The bootlid was particularly bad
Taped up
And the amazing difference some cleaner wax on a cutting pad can make on softer paint
A close up of the tapeline.
The difference dressing tires makes
before
After
Lastly the glass surfaces were cleaned and all the exterior trim dressed.
Here are the after shots from Saturday morning
Not perfect but a lot better than what it was, and should sell a bit easier (and hopefully for a bit more too). There were however still some serious etching marks all over the car.
Total time spent = 12 hours
Thanks for looking and any comments are welcome.
