Back from vacation: Yamaha Roadstar, Merc SL600, Maserati Spyder, and a rant.

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imported_Picus

New member
Hi everyone; hope it was a good holiday weekend/week for you all. I spent it in lovely Vermont at our families cabin. It was deck building time, but regardless it's always nice to get away to a place that lets you recharge.



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Now that I am back it's back to work. First up is a Yamaha Roadstar; this is the first bike detail I've done in a long time, I forgot how much I enjoy them. It's nice to be able to sit for the 80% of the detail! Process was:



Wash with ONR

Degrease a lot with poorboys apc 2:1

Polish metal with Menz IP/orange then Menz FPII/white

Zaino Z2pro

A lot of chrome polish!

Poorboys NL on all the bits.

Total time was about 4.5 hours.



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Next is a Mercedes SL600 that I had just polished with FPII/VM; it had some paint work and got a little (well, a lot) messed up, so this time I polished with OC/OP mix on an orange, AIO on a white, poorboys ex then ocw. Interior had a minor explosion so I did the whole thing; used a bunch of APC on the goop, pristine clean/rejuv oil on the leather, folex on the mats, lots of vacuuming, 303.



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Maserati Spyder 90th Anniversary, 79/90. Same owner as the 575M I did a couple weeks ago. Only minor swirling on this one, some pretty serious overspray from some paint work on both doors and the rear deck. Actually on this one clay took longer than polishing. Gorgeous car and paint; I love the color. Process:



Wash

Clay for ~2 hours (I used almost an entire 700g bar)

Menz IP/white

Prime Strong/white

Acrylic Jett

AJ Trigger



Oh, and those wheels... :grrr



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I'm stealing RickRacks schtick. :D

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AJ/Trigger looked amazing on this thing. The only word I can use to describe the look is "substantial", I know that's weird but it reminds me a lot of FMJ + HGAS in that the clear looks a mile deep but at the same time the color doesn't suffer at all (FMJ+HGAS was almost too reflective), the color is deep, flake just screams...



OK so my rant. About two weeks ago I parked my car outside for a few hours (in laws in town), when I went out to bring it back in I saw a guy yelling at a couple kids, I didn't think anything of it until I got to my car and noticed it was covered in tiny white dots. I looked back and sure enough the two kids were painters and were painting a house with sprayers (and didn't tarp behind themselves), about 40 cars, and trees, and houses, and everything, were covered in white primer. The guy yelling at them was in a 7 series that was close to the house (I was about 5 houses down!) and his car was absolutely *covered* in primer. Mine was about 500 dots per square foot, so a lot, but not like his. Anyway, I got their business card and name of their owner and called him that Monday; I told him I'd bill him for my hours and fix it myself, he said I was about the 10th caller that morning. I gave him my contact info in case he wanted to refer any of the other owners to me. OK, so no biggy; about 6 hours of work that I'd be reimbursed for and perhaps some business...



So about a week later I finally get around to claying my car. I spent about 5 hours doing the front 3/4 and then ran out of time so I left the rear un-done. The next day I took the car in for an oil change and my dealership, in their infinite wisdom (and despite the "DO NOT WASH" note on my account AND the sign in my window), washed it.. thinking they were doing me a favor. I caught them about 3/4 of the way through the wash and they were literally washing it with snow brushes.



So I spent a big part of my vacation polishing my car yet again. IP/orange via rotary, FPII/white, PO106FF on PC... about 7 hours. When I got back I polished again with Prime Strong to clean it up a bit more than put AJ on. All set... but I mean *** is up with people? Throught the entire thing I was struck by how un-phased most people were by their own screw ups. The painting kids actually suggested I let them clean it with rags. My dealership was all smiles as they absolutely abused my paint with brushes.. Arhg, ok rant over!



Cheers.
 
I almost couldn't wait for the rant to post. :) I absolutely LOVE reading your click & brag posts. The bike...stunning. The Benz....just wow. The rant? Very well said, and I'm sorry to hear about both experiences.
 
Hey thanks guys. No problem on my car; it was a rant but it's worked out now and I got some business out of it. Just crazy how we all seem to care so much about our cars and others are just SO ambivilant.



Oh, this stopped by when I did the Maserati, I hope to detail it soon, it's a cool car but the paint is :eek



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The bike is cooool! :cooleek: (Might have once belonged to Batman
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Great job on the Benz (especially cleaning up after the food fight)! And the Maserati is eye-popping!



Good job keeping your cool with the thoughtless painters and dealer's dopes.
 
Your work is amazing...I always like reading through your process and seeing how you achive your results. It seems as if when you detail you dont get very much marring when you can jump down from OC/OP on an orange pad to AIO...And your other jumping down to prime strong..How do you work so you dont get very much marring to deal with at the end? thanks for the help!
 
Terrific work on all three, but that Maserati...damn! :bow



Sorry to hear about your car, that is so common it isn't funny. I once spent two days removing overspray from a black Ford F-350 dualie that was covered in paint from the clowns who painted the business next door on a spring day with 30 mph winds.



Dealers too, what morons. I was at a regular's house today when her sister and brother-in-law pulled up in their new '07 Escalade. The husband got out and walked over to me and said they were interested in me washing their Escalade regularly because the free washes at Moritz were doing more harm than good. I guess it is job security, eh?
 
Joshua312 said:
Your work is amazing...I always like reading through your process and seeing how you achive your results. It seems as if when you detail you dont get very much marring when you can jump down from OC/OP on an orange pad to AIO...And your other jumping down to prime strong..How do you work so you dont get very much marring to deal with at the end? thanks for the help!
Click to expand...



Well OC/OP doesn't leave much micro marring at all in my experience, in fact I'd venture to guess that on lighter finishes you could go right to an LSP if you used it on a white pad. On an orange pad I did have very, very light micromarring, AIO took it out and left the surface looking great.



On the Maserati same deal, IP on an orange can haze, but on a white it rarely does. Prime Strong is more akin to the old AIO, so it'll actually remove some light marring. I was going to go IP > FPII > PS, but I decided to try PS on the fender and it worked, so I skipped FPII.



I don't know that I am doing anything different, I don't use a ton of pressure when I polish which I find can induce some haze. I sort of let the PC do the work (or rotary for that matter). In most cases I actually go overboard (PG -> IP - > FPII when I could go PG -> FPII for example), but these combos were working so..



Scottwax said:
Terrific work on all three, but that Maserati...damn! :bow



Sorry to hear about your car, that is so common it isn't funny. I once spent two days removing overspray from a black Ford F-350 dualie that was covered in paint from the clowns who painted the business next door on a spring day with 30 mph winds.



Dealers too, what morons. I was at a regular's house today when her sister and brother-in-law pulled up in their new '07 Escalade. The husband got out and walked over to me and said they were interested in me washing their Escalade regularly because the free washes at Moritz were doing more harm than good. I guess it is job security, eh?
Click to expand...



Ya, absolutely. I get so many calls that start with "the dealership did..." Still, it was a pain when they did it to my car. It wasn't so bad that they did it, but their total ignorance in thinking they were doing me a favor... /boggle.
 
Gorgeous work all around!!!



I'm very sorry to hear about your mishap. Those situations irk me beyond belief.
 
The Maserati simply looks wonderful and I can't wait to see how that black car will turn out after your magic touch :2thumbs: .
 
I did, actually. I already did one; just a wash + clay + wax; took about 4 hours total, 3 of those were clay, the car was an e46 330i (2002 I think). I have two more next week, one is wash/clay/wax (Acura MDX) the other is a polish job (Jaguar S-type). I talked to the owner of the painting company again today (he got my invoice) and he said most folks are just getting $59.99 express details, which means they're probably scraping the primer off with a hard bristle brush... oh well.



So ya it worked out in the end on that front. I never was really that mad about the primer since I knew I could take care of it; more at the kids lack of concern and of course my dealership... if I didn't have an oil change deal with them I'd go elsewhere.
 
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