Alrighty guys, I did this detail right before I left for vacation. I finished Sunday the 31st at 8pm, and had to be up at 5am the next morning to fly to NC, where I met Karl, and then drive 3000 miles BACK to CA with my bro!!
Anyways, enough of my personal life. Here's a 2006 Lexus IS350 that is midly VIP'd and it's done VERY VERY well! Not to over the top, just the right amount of VIP flavor. I had given an estimate for this car, exterior only, about a month and a half ago. I had previously measured the paint, and knew I had a lot to work with, and so the owner and I agreed on 90-95%+ correction and looking to do JUST the exterior. After everything was said and done, I spent about 22 hours on the car in two days, and it was a LOT of work. Almost every single panel corrected differently so I had to constantly change the process just a bit (i will get in to this later). Anyways, on to the detail!
When I first had the car out in the morning:
First up was the wheels.
I first pressure rinsed the rims down to get rid of as much loose dirt as possible. Then I sprayed Autoglym Custom Wheel Cleaner on the wheels and let dwell for about a minute. Ken had given this to me for a test that I have yet to post ( :sorry: ) and I have to say, this is probably the best wheel cleaner I have come across, and I've tried 18 to date. It's very inexpensive, foams MORE than P21S, and Cleans JUST as well.
I then agitated them with various brushes. The wheel wells were treated with P21S TAW, and the tires cleaned with
Eimann Fabrik Tire Cleaner
(look at the foaming action of the AG!)
I then pressure rinsed the wheels and arches down and moved to the rest of the wheels. After that was complete, I decided to tackle the engine bay.
I sprayed the engine bay down with a liberal amount of P21S TAW, let sit for about a minute, and then agitated.
I then dressed it later on with 303
Aerospace Protectant to reduce static cling, and give a matte sheen.
Once the engine bay was cleaned, I pressure rinsed the entire car down with DI water to remove surface grime, then foamed with 2oz of CWC in the foam cannon followed by a CWC two bucket wash.
After the car was washed, I brought it in, while still wet, to be clayed. This is where the problems started. The car felt literally like 800 grit sand paper. The most aggressive clay I had with me was Riccardo Yellow. And after spending about 20 minutes on half the hood, making 5 passes, and using half a bar on just that half of the hood, I knew this wasn't going to work. So I called my local detailing product supplier, Denzil (
: ) and asked if he had any ideas what to use. He advised Megs Red, but wasn't home, so after a frantic search I found a supplier locally (a distributor) who carried it and went and bought some. Eventually I got the car as smooth as glass.. but it took 3 hours to clay. I first did two passes of the Megs red, but it wasn't picking up the fine fallout, so I then made one pass of riccardo yellow to clean up the rest. This did the trick! never, have I had to do a two-stage clay before!
The wheels were also clayed.
I then polished the wheels, my new go-to product for metal polishing has been P21S. But for these wheels, they were more oxidized then needing a polish. So after a failed attempt with p21s polishing soap (to my astonishment) I went to the old staple of Mothers Mag & Aluminum polish to clear up the oxidation. I then protected the wheels with Swissvax Autobahn. The tires were dressed with Megs HD cut 3:1, and the arches received Adams Undercarriage Spray.
Now on to the paint work. I also had an issue here. I went through about 5 different steps around the car. I had figured this car was going to be very easy to correct, as the IS250 I did a few months ago corrected 95%+ with just the KBflex(pc)M. This car, however, was a different story. I ended up doing a 3-step process. It was compounded with an Orange Pad and a Mix of
M105 and 3M UK Fast Cut Plus for two passes on the
Flex DA, then went to the Makita and finished up with 3M Yellow Pad+SIP, and then 3M Blue Pad+85rd one pass each. The result was about 95%ish correction, with some areas such as the hood only getting about 90% correction due to the deep scratches that I wasn't able to remove in the amount of time allocated.
Before:
Here's some 50/50's of said process:
Finished hood:
Linear Mode
