The subject of saturday's tuition detail was a rather tidy looking Skoda Fabia VRS belonging to Paul, a DW member
The car on arrival showed typical road grime, and some flies from its drive up, and underneath the dirt you could start to make out a bit of flatness to the paintwork...
Bird bomb as well, which as we'll see a little later had unfortunately etched the finish...
9am, just had a cuppa and a chat, time to get started
And what better place to start than with the wheels and arches which were in need of a bit of a clean...
Wheels were cleaned using a selection of brushes and Bilberry Wheel Cleaner, while the arches were cleaned using
Meguiars All Purpose Cleaner. Tyres also cleaned with APC...
Paul getting stuck into the wheel cleaning...
Autosmart Tardis doing its job on the tar...
Wheels and arches cleaned...
Onto the bodywork, the car was first foamed using Supa Snow Foam through the foam lance to eliminate loose grit on the paintwork... no point making more work for yourself with a poor wash technique, and good to demonstrate correct wash technique as part of the tuition detail... Foamy
Then washed using two bucket method and rinsed ready for claying...
The car was then clayed using
Meguiars Mirror Glaze Blue (Mild) Clay and
Last Touch as a lube... Note, the clay is not at my finger tips but rather it is in the palm of my hand so as not to inflict any local pressure through the clay bar that can lead to marring...
Dried off and rolled up the unit ready for polishing... Now we can see the true finish of the car and it was looking good with a clean...
Alas, the bird bomb etched...
The paint finish was also looking a little flat...
General swirling and some marring from previous claying some time ago was evident in the paint finish which was taking away from the gloss a little... Using the Sun Gun, we can see these swirls and marring...
Experimenting with polishes, we came to the conclusion that the paint was not all that hard (despite being VAG - best never to assume
). Correction was carried out using
Menzerna Intensive Polish (PO85RD3.02) on a
Meguiars W8006 Yellow polishing pad, and refining was done with
Meguiars #205 Ultra Finishing Polish on a
Meguiars W9006 tan finishing pad. Application technique was as follows for both:
Menzerna Intensive Polish
A correction only technique was used here as there was no need to refine the finish when a dedicated finishing polish was to be used anyway - so spread the polish, get it working and then work at speed to correct...
- Spread at 600rpm, light pressure
- Begin working at 1200rpm, light pressure for a couple of passes to get residue evenly spread
- Work at 1500 - 1800rpm until residue clear and defects removed
A second hit was used in a couple of places where there were deeper scratches... more on that a little later
Meguiars #205 Ultra Finishing Polish
A Double Zenith technique used here to refine and burnish the paint to a
deep gloss finish and high clarity
This varies both speeds and pressures together to work the
unigrit abrasives to the best of their abilities...
- Spread at 600rpm, light pressure
- Begin working at 1200rpm until residue evenly spread, light to medium pressure
- Work at 1500rpm with increasing pressure, levelling at medium pressure tuntil residue clear
- Reduce speed to 1200rpm and begin reducing pressure
- Finish at 900rpm, light pressure to burnish the paint finish
The results of the above polishing on the paint finish under the Sun Gun... (still requires an IPA wipe here though, to ensure all residues removed and no filling has taken place...)
Gloss restored to the finish...
!)
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