Before:
After:
While I had the 80mm pads on the Makita, I focused on the "cramped" areas. They received SIP/Green x4 and 106FA/Yellow x2:
At this point, I was two full days in to the detail, and I've only made it half way around the car!! It was surely going to take longer than expected due to the super hard clear. I informed the owner, and began the third day with the trunk lid area. This was BY FAR the most damaged panel of the entire car. I got it to about 95% corrected, but it would require wetsanding the deep RIDS to make it perfect. The owner had decided against it, and so i did the best I could with the wool. The before pictures in the beginning really show the condition well, but experiencing was something different! I ended up doing EIGHT passes of
M105/Wool and then 3 Passes of SIP/Green and One pass of 106/Yellow.
After 8 passes of wool:
Typical wool marring, and holograms still show, but as you can see, it's quite clear, and almost no RIDS show.
I then moved on to the rear quarter. I did 105/Wool x4, then SIP/green x2 and 106/yellow once:
(the four scratches shown could be caught with a fingernail, and as such I couldn't remove them to the fullest)
After nearly 12 hours invested so far in to JUST polishing, it was time for a good wash:
So I brought it outside for it's final wash. I spent about 30 minutes washing it as thoroughly as possible. I tried something new, that I felt worked amazingly well. I took P21S TAW and sprayed it in all of the seems and cracks to further loosed caked on polishing dust. I decided I'd rather "waste" product on the body seems and panel gaps, then risk agitating the polishing dust, and re-marring the perfected paint. The process actually worked out VERY well, and I plan on doing it for every detail from now on, to keep contact with the paint to a minimum during final rinse.
It was about 4:30pm Tuesday evening when I finally got the car rinsed down, and I rushed it outside to get some sun shots the best I could. The clouds were coming in because of a story on its way (now is here) and the sun was in and out of the clouds. Remember, this is BEFORE my final burnishing stage, or wax!
That was the best I could do
. Anyways, I brought the car back in the garage one last time and brought out my "jeweling" machine. I mated the Metabo Rotary with the 3M UK Blue Finishing Pad, and Ultrafina to give it that extra pop and wet-look.
After this stage, I first applied a coat of JETseal109, and buffed off. Then I applied Swissvax Concorso over the top to finish it off with a deep glow, and unsurpassed wet look. I had about 10 minutes of light left (about 5:30pm now) and I pulled it out for the best I could do on "sun" shots (note, the tires aren't dressed, exhaust polished, seals dressed/conditioned, I pulled it out as SOON as the wax was curred and wiped off to get the best of the light I could)
Then I caught a break in the clouds a bit!