Hi boys and girls! Can I say "pimp" on TV? Oh well, just did
. Anyway, this car came from another dealer last week and it needed quite a bit of service done to it (approx $6,000
) and whoever owned it before sure did abuse the hell out of the paint. Obviously it had never seen a drop of wax until it came in for some "Jesse Love" and the copious amount of scratches and swirls on it were tell-tale signs of the cowboy car washes in this country.
So, we arranged to have the back bumper resprayed and then the boys got started on the service. Also, someone tried to break into it by trying to pry the glass out on the passenger side so they could stick their hand in. Obviously amateurs because these windows are impossible to pry open without breaking them... and they did break it. That was also on the list to be replaced. Here's some befores:
The window
Back bumper at the painter's now
Under the Crime Light
In the spotlight
These looked like absolute dookey. They were a bit sun-bleached and scratched very deeply so basically the only thing I could do with them was bring back the shine to them.
Poor little guy gave his life in the name of highway exploration... RIP dude.
What's the first thing that goes through a bug's mind when he hits the bumper of a car? His a$$!
Removed the Pininfarina badges
Got the bumper back and after we reinstalled it, I had a look under the halogens... guess they must have missed a number on the paint code! Pfft! Also, the back, right parking sensor had to be wet-sanded because they sprayed it too thick therefore disabling it...
"Spidey wuz here!"
So on to the polishing. Now that I have satisfied my quest for the ultimate one-stepper I'm going back to regular "phase" polishing because although pulling off a one-stepper on a ceramic finish is pretty cool, it still takes just as much time to do as the conventional "multi-stage" polishing. It's not often that I break out the big guns, but this boat and its horrible condition left me with no choice but to summon the Wooly Mammoth... an 8" Auto Magic wool pad. Another reason I used that pad is because I was pressed for time... again. I stayed until about 11:00 last night working on it and all night I just kept humming the
Smoky and the Bandit theme song to myself... "We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there..."
This turned out to be a 3-stage polishing job, which I haven't had to do in a while. The Wooly Mammoth and InstaFinish Insta Cut #2 leveled this paint like Hiroshima, but left a lot of swirls behind it. Then I used Insta Cut #2 and a polishing pad to smooth that out, followed by IF Foam Pad Polish and a finishing pad. The monster again >>
Engine cleaned with IF Super APC and my tongue, then dressed with Super Protect All. After dressing it I went back with a towel and smoothed out the dressing and wiped all the hoses down and everything so it didn't look so freshly cleaned. It just looks a bit tacky with all the shiny, shiny.
When the dealer came to collect the car he just walked around it for a minute in silence... then while still staring at the car he said, "I'm taking this to the fu^%ing car wash near my dealership to show those morons how its supposed to be done."
He deals almost exclusively with high-dollar cars and told me I can expect about 3-5 from him every month... yeeeees. Here's the goods, enjoy!
BTW, after heavy compounding I had to take this car downstairs to wash it. It was a blistering 40 degrees (that's 104 degrees for the metric impaired) outside and I had to wash it in the sun so I figured I'd wash it quickly and then air-dry it... on the road. Holy bat, Crapman! This thing scoots like a horny rooster in a hen house!!! I still had a few water spots but cleaning them was a small price to pay for being able to pimp it for a bit
.
Thanks for reading and to the Playboy subscribers, thanks for "reading"!
- Jesse
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