520 hp SUV.
This was one of the most difficult details I have done. I already knew from a regular who has a black '04 Cayenne Turbo that the paint is real finicky but it never needed a really hard correction. The owner just purchased it a few weeks ago. The original owner is from Atlanta but not sure if he picked it up from that person or bought it through a dealer. Like an M5 I looked at earlier this summer that was also bought used from someone in Atlanta, it had acid rain damage that simply laughed at
Meguiars #105 and a rotary. It *may* be possible to wetsand it out but not having a paint thickness gauge, I really didn't feel comfortable wetsanding a $130,000 black SUV. Not to mention that the black paint on the Cayenne, while very tough to polish the swirls out of, also has a nasty tendency to haze. The owner had tried to polish the car out (Menzerna 106 with an orange, then a white LC pad), plus it had rotary swirls in the hood as well so that also was a reason to not start sanding without a paint thickness gauge. No telling what had already been removed.
This is pretty representative of the whole vehicle:
Fender with #105 and a yellow
Meguiars polishing pad @ 1000-1200 rpm, #80 Speed glaze with a
Meguiars polishing pad @ 1400 finishing at 1000 rpm, then 3M Ultrafina using a blue Ultrafina pad, 1000-1800-1000 rpms. Door is the same as the picture above.
The pitting you see was all over the horizontal panels and the top of the sides (where they angle in towards the windows). I've seen that on other cars too, never really have heard what causes it but it was there before I started polishing...some of that is dust too though. Really only visible right around the sun spot, otherwise you don't see it.
What was really odd is that even though I used #80 on the fender after #105, it was making worse holograms than #105 was. So did #83 (really awful!) and Optimum Polish. Just driving me nuts trying to find a step down from #105. I finally tried #105 with a
Meguiars finishing pad and that did a pretty good job. Washed the dust off with ONR and I then went with 3M Ultrafina and a yellow
Meguiars polishing pad @ 1200-1400 rpm over the whole car.
These are after the above steps:
Another ONR wash, touched up a few areas with the UF/yellow
Meguiars combo
Another ONR wash and then 3M UF with a blue UF pad, 1000-1800-1000. This is as much sun as was left...and I had started at 9:30 AM! Still some dust (in the crevices and on the rear pillars) and residue around the lettering but the sun wasn't waiting on me to get to it.
Another ONR wash (I think I washed it 4 or 5 times total!) and then I put on a coat of Clearkote's Carnauba Moose. The sun was pretty much right on the horizon when I took these pictures.
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