Eric@CherryOnTop
New member
- Jun 23, 2012
- 1,168
- 0
I got this car in the shop from a frantic owner thinking it would need to be repainted after the local "buff and wax for $99" guy got his hands on it. The car is black with scratch shield paint. It got in a minor fender bender, had the hood and bumper repainted and then went to the "detail shop" to be finished. Well they finished it all right, right into the land of swirl marks and holograms. I couldn't believe what I saw when the car came by for inspection. The hood looked like it had been compounded with a scotch brite pad. I was actually mad, thankfully the owner told me he refused to pay the shop for their terrible work. After discussing why this happened to his car and how they actually damaged his car by removing precious clear coat, a plan of action was made. He intends to sell the car in the next few years, so he didn't want a show car finish, just to clean it up as best I could within a reasonable budget. Due to the damage, multiple approaches were necessary. Here are some pics of how the car arrived...
And maybe the worst of all, under the high powered LED lights...
I gave the car a rinseless wash with ONR blue and used a Speedy Prep medium grade decontamination towel with more ONR as lube. Even though this car has scratch shield paint, it is a 2011 model year so I was reasonably confident that the resin in the paint system were inert at this point and would not give me a problem. Thankfully, I was right. I ended up compounding the hood (twice) and the decklid with Meguiars M101 on an orange pad with my Rupes 15. This left a noticeable scour and haze to the paint, but the deeper defects were removed. I went over the whole car with HD Speed and then HD Poxy. I can't say enough good things about HD Speed. I've used on probably a half dozen cars now (the same 16oz. bottle, so you really get your money's worth) and it never fails to impress. Let's look at the progress:
Here's the "before" of the door:
And after:
50/50:
Fender before:
After:
After of the rear door:
And maybe the worst of all, under the high powered LED lights...
I gave the car a rinseless wash with ONR blue and used a Speedy Prep medium grade decontamination towel with more ONR as lube. Even though this car has scratch shield paint, it is a 2011 model year so I was reasonably confident that the resin in the paint system were inert at this point and would not give me a problem. Thankfully, I was right. I ended up compounding the hood (twice) and the decklid with Meguiars M101 on an orange pad with my Rupes 15. This left a noticeable scour and haze to the paint, but the deeper defects were removed. I went over the whole car with HD Speed and then HD Poxy. I can't say enough good things about HD Speed. I've used on probably a half dozen cars now (the same 16oz. bottle, so you really get your money's worth) and it never fails to impress. Let's look at the progress:
Here's the "before" of the door:
And after:
50/50:
Fender before:
After:
After of the rear door:
