This car belongs to one of my best clients. It is a Mercedes Benz E55 station wagon. This by all means is not your typical kid hauler! It is the fastest family mobile in the world. It has a hand-built supercharged 5.5-liter V8 that is rated at 469 horsepower from the factory and runs the quarter mile in 13 seconds at 112mph. This particular car has got a few mods done to it and is currently pushing about 500 horsepower at the rear wheels and ran 11.7 in the quarter mile
. The owner is also installing cams and a few other goodies in the near future. I still can't believe that this car will absolutely kill my Corvette in the quarter mile, but I guess for nearly $100,000, it should.
Anyways, I take car of this car pretty often. I detail it about 4 times each year and it is kept in tip top condition by the owner. I performed the last complete detail on it about 3 or 4 weeks ago and had it looking showroom new. This all changed when he brought it into the Mercedes dealer last week and they decided to give the car a complimentary "sand wash". He always deals with a particular service advisor that knows not to wash the vehicle when it is in for service, but this time he dealt with someone else that was not aware of this. Because of the snowy weather around here lately, the car arrived at the dealer with sand and salt all over the exterior. From the looks of the paint, you would think that they had simply just wiped off all of the sand and salt with a towel with out ever rinsing it off. To say the least, the owner was not very happy when he laid his eyes on the car and saw all of the scratches. He called me right away to schedule an appointment.
My main goal was to get the paint back in as good condition as it was before. It took me a total of over 20 hours of buffing to get the paint back in tip top shape.
MY PROCESS:
Rinsed car thoroughly to remove salt and sand from exterior, wheel wells and door jambs
Washed, cleaned wheels and tires
Dried exterior and blew out all cracks and crevices with compressed air to remove any sand that may have been present
Taped up all rubber gaskets around the doors, mesh screens in the bumpers, etc..
Wetsanded a few areas with 2000 grit paper & compounded out with 3M microfinishing compound using a yellow wool pad
Buffed complete exterior using Powergloss compound using a yellow wool pad
Buffed complete exterior with Super
Intensive Polish X 2 using a yellow ripple foam cutting pad
Buffed complete exterior with 106ff (some panels twice) using a white foam polishing pad
Buffed complete exterior with
Final Polish II using a black ripple foam finishing pad
IPA wipedown to complete exterior and inspected paint under halogens
Werkstatt's Prime by hand
Finish Kare's 1000P by hand
Z8 Wipedown
Finish Kare's Pink Wax by hand
Wheels and all exterior glass treated with Opti-Seal
Dressed tires with Super Blue dressing (wheel wells were not dressed)
BEFORE PICTURES AND 50/50 SHOTS
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