This car was courtesy of a referral from Twista616...thank you!
This week's feature detail is a black Audi A4. Black is the most challenging color to polish to perfection as it shows every single flaw, and it requires several polish steps starting with compounding to remove heavy defects, and ends with finish polishing to remove the haze left by the compound and to ultimately bring out a
deep gloss. When you also consider that Audi has arguably the hardest clear coat in the business (which means it takes longer to polish), I knew that I was going to spend a considerable amount of time on this vehicle.
The owner of the A4 bought this car used earlier in the year from a local dealer. As part of their prep process, they had an unskilled rotary user attack the black paint (bad combination!), and did more damage than good. When the owner took delivery, the car was conveniently parked in the shade where the damage couldn't be seen. I suspect they also used filling glazes that would temporarily hide the true condition of the paint. A rotary polisher in the wrong hands can do a lot of damage...best case scenario the car is left with buffer burn/buffer trails/holograms. Not only did this car have bad holograms, but it looks like the buffing pad that was used had abrasive dirt in it, which caused deep, swirling scratches that were pretty severe in some areas. We've all seen the cars that may appear shiny, but covered in these holograms all over. I regularly correct this kind of damage that is caused by dealers and "inexpensive" detail jobs.
When I was done, I corrected all of the previous damage, and brought depth and gloss to the finish that it hadn't seen since it was brand new. There were a few deep scratches that could only be made better, but in the end I got about 97% correction rate. The wheels and exhaust tips required a considerable amount of work, and I even had to wetsand the exhaust tips to bring them back to life.
Process:
Dawn wash to remove any remaining wax
Clay
Wash again
Blow dry using Blaster Sidekick
IPA (isopropyl alcohol) wipedown
Windows cleaned with Stoner's Invisible Glass
Clean wheels with
Meg's Wheel Brighterner
Wheel wells cleaned with
Meg's APC+
Tires dressed with Sonus Tire Gel
Exhaust tips cleaned with 0000 steel wool
"" 1500 grit wetsand
"" 2000 grit wetsand
Polishing:
Megs 95 with Purple Foamed Wool for leveling stage
IPA wipedown
Menzerna 106FF with white pad for finishing stage
IPA wipedown
Optimum car wax by hand
Tools used:
Makita 9227 rotary polisher
Porter Cable DA polisher
Blaster Sidekick dryer
Canon Rebel XSi with 18/55mm lense
Total time: 10.5 hours
Notice the holograms/buffer trails in the hood. The camera couldn't capture how bad these really were...some of the worst I have seen.
The wheels were caked with brake dust!
At one point in time, these were stainless.
Here is a half/half after one pass with PFW/Megs 95. Looks much better already.
Here is a before where you can see the severity of the buffer burn:
After leveling stage:
Linear Mode
