Is this really Lexus certified appearance standard?
Someone actually signed off on this car and his signature is on the passenger side of the front window in the lower corner.
The owner contacted me in late May about his new to him IS350. Because of the on and off rain here. my trip to Kentucky and his work schedule, I wasn't able to get to the car until today. He had said the paint had a "hazy" appearance in random areas. In his garage it looked fine, other than some spotting from parking near sprinklers over the weekend. I explained to him that water damage from regular exposure to sprinklers can eventually etch the paint so deeply it cannot be polished out. I told him that he should never park within 20-30 feet of grassy areas in parking lots, which is usually enough distance to be out of sprinkler range.
He backed out the car and I was stunned at the rotary swirls. I knew it was going to be a LONG day. I started with
Meguiars #205 with a yellow
Meguiars polishing pad via rotary @ 1000-1500 rpms and while it was removing the holograms it wasn't doing much for the deeper marring and spider swirls. Even though my customer wasn't prepared to shell out what perfection would cost, he did agree that it would be worth removing as much of the spider swirling as possible (without it turning into a 2 day detail). He said he'd rather get most of the stuff out now and then have me out every 3 months to go over the car again which will not only keep it protected but further refine the finish.
I bumped it up to
Meguiars #105, again using a
Meguiars yellow polishing pad, mostly at 1000-1200 rpms. Even though I was getting some light holograms from #105, the paint was noticably darker and looked a lot better. Switching to #205/yellow at 1000-1500 rpms and going over the whole car really cleaned up with finish and left only minimal tracers.
Unfortunately, the sun had moved significantly from where it was when I started (something like 5 hours prior) and only the hood still had enough sun on it for this shot after #105/205:
I then went over the whole car with 3M Ultrafine Machine Polish using a blue Ultrafina pad at 1000-1800-100 rpms.
The car is not 100% perfect but for only about 6.5 hours of polishing a finish that hammered at the start, it definitely exceeded my expectations and made my customer quite pleased. I washed the car (for the 3rd time!) with ONR to remove the light dusting from UF and to reclean the door jambs (dust) and put on a coat of Clearkote's Carnauba Moose.
As you can see by the long shadows, it was early evening by the time I finished the car.
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