'08 Accord, IS350, beyond nasty Explorer, a pair of 335i's

[Scottwax]

This one will choke DSL and may kill some browsers...

2008 Honda Accord. Light to moderate swirls, courtesy of the dealer. My customer noticed the makeready guy washing another car with a circular brush and told him the brush was scratching the cars. The makeready guy told him the brush doesn't cause scratches. He showed him his new Accord and the makeready guy said that was how the paint normally looks. Needless to say, he declined to let the dealer attempt to remove the scratches and swirls.

Pretty typical of the whole car:



I decided to try the least aggressive method first, 3M Ultrafina and the blue Ultrafina pad. Pretty happy with how it turned out.



The hood has some light water etching, used Meguiars #105 cut 20% or so with Optimum Polish using a yellow Meguiars polishing pad @ 1000 rpms, which removed the waterspots but left noticable holograms. Followed with Optimum Polish using a blue Soft Edge polishing pad which removed the deeper swirls but left some light holograms. Final pass was with Ultrafina and the blue UF pad.





The driver's side is polished (Ultrafina) at this point. Figured by the time I was completely finished, it would be near dusk.



After polishing, I topped the car with Clearkote's Carnauba Moose.

[Scottwax]

2006 Lexus IS350. He has me out about 3 times a year to take care of his car. Overall, it was still in really good shape and still beading from the January application of two coats of Opti-Seal. Just needed a light polishing (no point going nuts anyway, he lives at an apartment complex and only has covered parking) so I used the PC, Meguiars yellow polishing pad with Pink Moose plus (again, keeping the plus my secret for now).

These flake and well lit shots are just the Pink Moose plus, the fully shaded shots (near dusk when I finished this one too) include a coat of CMW.

[Scottwax]

2003 Ford Explorer. This one was a suprise. I was supposed to be doing a wash/wax on an ES350, an interior detail on a GMC truck and a full detail on an unknown vehicle (the person with the Lexus lets everyone know I am coming and didn't know what the vehicle was) which turned out to be this Explorer. It belongs to the girlfriend of the person driving it. Told her he'd pay for the detail but she has to keep it clean, otherwise she has to pay him back.

Outside wasn't too bad...





But the inside...yuck.





No idea what all this mess is, never could get it completely clean, part of the carpet was rock hard.











Direct before and after of the above shot, using BioKleen's Traffic Lane Cleaner and the Cyclo carpet brush attachment on my PC. Not 100% perfect but definitely a huge improvement.



Along with the BioKleen TLC/brush and PC combo, the vinyl was cleaned with Woolite/water and dressed with Optimum Protectant Plus.















Exterior just got an ONR wash and two quick coats of Opti-Seal since the interior was the main focus.

[Scottwax]

I last polished/waxed this black 2008 BMW 335i in January. When I got to the owner's house, he apologized for how dirty the car was. He'd been out of town and it sat at the top of one of the parking garages at DFW airport for two weeks. During that time, it rained a few times, several thousand planes (with jet exhaust trailing) flew over it, etc. I started washing it and notice the water spots weren't coming off, so I clayed as I washed. Helped some but not that much. I was happy to see the spider swirls I have removed in January were still a good 80% gone or more likely, he was washing the car well enough he only got minimal new swirling. As you can see under the halogens, other than the water spots, the paint was in pretty good shape.

Jet black 335s have really soft paint, so like the Accord, I started off with UF and a blue UF pad.

Before:



After:



Before:



Half polished:



Fully polished:



Under the halogens (the sun never popped out while I was there):





After polishing, I applied Carnauba Moose.

[Scottwax]

Another '08 BMW 335l. The owner bought the car with about 12,000 miles on it. Obviously the original owner wasn't too careful washing it, the paint had a lot of mostly moderate swirling. Unlike the jet black 335 paint, the metallic blue is pretty hard.

This half 'n half shot shows what I was able to achieve using Meguiars #105 cut 20% with Optimum Polish using a yellow Meguiars polishing pad @ 1000 rpms followed by Ultrafina and blue pad @ 1000/1800/1000 rpms.



Before:



105/OP step-definitely hard paint, notice the very minimal holograms from using a pretty stout combo.



After going over the area again with Ultrafina:



A few areas had some RIDs I couldn't completely remove:



Overall though, the finish ended up 95-98% defect free over the entire car:









Finished with a coat of Carnauba Moose on this one too.

[TheMethod]

That Lexus =

great work Scott!

[jswift2000]

great work. That explorer was a disaster. Did something bite you while cleaning the inside?

[lawrencea]

Ill bet any amount of money that the girl will not keep the Explorer clean. Clean people are clean , dirty people are dirty. A clean person is always clean and a dirty person is always dirty. I cleaned a car for my son in law that was very bad .It came out very good but 2 months later it looked like I never did it-spilled soda on the front seats and carpet, and empty food wrapers all aver the place.

[dsms]

Fantastic work on all of them

[tdekany]

Scott, last car's pictures are not there (X)

The rest look amazing!!!!!!! :bow

[shine]

Great job with all of them Scott!

[4fit?]

GReat work as always Scott. That Lexus is amazing!