BMW 335i, Lexus SC430

[Scottwax]

I detailed this BMW 335i back in March, since then we've pretty much had constant rain so the owner wanted it waxed again, plus he had some light bird bomb etchings and surface scratches he wanted polished out.

Pretty dirty to start:



Some Optimum No Rinse Wash cleaned it up nicely.



I polished the top half of the car with Optimum Compound using orange Edge Cyclo cutting pads (sides looked pretty good still), followed by Zaino Z-PC using green Edge Cyclo polishing pads. About halfway through polishing with Z-PC, it started to rain. Like usual. Now rained 15 out of the last 17 days. Ugh.

Anyway, I pulled it into the garage, finished polishing and sealed it with Optimum Opti-Seal by hand. I took some pics in the garage since it was still sprinkling a bit.









After putting my stuff away, I noticed the rain stopped so I pulled the car out for a few quick pics.

[tdekany]

Wow!

Fantastic reflections!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Scottwax]

2003 Lexus SC430. Detailed it about a year ago, customer maintains it with ONR and OCW but hadn't touched it in a few months due to the weather. When I detailed it a year ago, I noted a few problem areas where it appeared the paint had some buffer burn that I wasn't able to make much headway on which were of course, still there. The paint also had a kind of hazy look to it but the paint under the clear bra, which I had polished out before the bra was installed was still swirl free but the clear bra also had a light haze. The customer wasn't there (out for the day) so I didn't have a chance to talk to him about the haze and what might be causing it.

Anyway, like the BMW, it was pretty dirty but came clean with ONR.





The owner of the car was only willing to pay for a two step on the paint, says no reason to make it perfect, he can't keep a daily driver perfect anyway. I decide to polish it out with Clearkote's Vanilla Moose with about 25% Red Machine Glaze added (Pink Moose bottle cracked so I dumped a 50/50 mixture VM/RMG into a 2/3rds full bottle of Vanilla Moose. I used this "off white" Moose in conjunction with green Edge Cyclo polishing pads.

Here, you can see the door is polished, the rear fender is not.



Now both door and fender are polished.



Getting good before and after polishing sun shots was tough to to partly to mostly cloudy conditions.

Before:



After:



Before:



After-you can see some of the buffer burn/hazing at the top of the fender (lower sun spot) that I couldn't completely remove, there was a section of the trunk lid that had the same hazing, rest of it was fine



I then pulled the car inside to wax it and that is when the rain hit. Hard. Like usual.

I used Clearkote's Carnauba Moose and buffed it off with a 50/50 blend of Werkstatt's Carnauba Jett and Optimum Car Wax. I had to take the pics in the garage because the rain wouldn't let up.

[Scottwax]

Originally Posted by VaSuperShine

lol i just noticed how clean the wheels were in the befores, or had you already tended to them?

I do the wheels and fenderwells first, so any overspray from dressing the fenderwells is washed off when I wash the body of the car.

[Scottwax]

Originally Posted by VaSuperShine

so if you do a two step does it normally consist of a non abrassive or very lightly abrassive polish followed by lsp?

Usually the most aggressive polish that will finish down LSP ready, then a wax or sealant.

[74 thing]

Scott, I am glad you are still alive and kicking. I have been seeing some crazy weather reports from down in Texas in the past few weeks and that is probably the reason for your lack of posts that I usually look forward to.

[sevenrd]

Great work, Scott!

I recently worked on an SC430 and couldn't figure out why they bothered putting rear seats in those things. Unless one doesn't have legs they're pretty worthless.

[DieselMDX]

awesome job as usual that combo on the lexus looks mint

[BlackElantraGT]

That must suck to have all that rain. You could send some our way because we got barely 3" of rainfall this year.

We share different definitions of what "pretty dirty" is. For me, the cars look about averagely dirty. Either the photos don't capture all the detail or I don't have a trained eye because I can't really see any difference between the before and after pics of the SC400.

Nonetheless, your details always end up looking really nice. Looks like you're taking quite a liking to the Opti-Seal, as I haven't seen you use your Pink#16 combo in awhile

[audicoupej]

The details are looking great as always Scott!

How do you like the OCW/CJ combo on red?

Do you like OS better than AJ? It seems you are using OS more lately.

[Gen2]

Oh My Goodness !!! These 2 cars looks awesome, extremely wet and deep looking, and the BMW almost looks like chrome in the photos taken in the garage .

[S Brake]

What in the world do you use to clean wheels, I need some of that now!