'08 Jet Black BMW 535i Car Wash Damage Repair - Explicit Details Auto Appearance

[Richard Grasa]

My customer took his `08 535i through a local car wash tunnel to get the winter salt and sand off of it.` After taking the car through the wash a total of 3 times, some major damage was inflicted to the jet black paint.` The car has under 20k miles on it and before going through this car wash, only had normal hand wash induced marring and for a 6 year old black BMW, looked pretty good.` My job was to get the paint back into that good condition, and if I could stay within budget, make it look even better than it did` before going through the automatic wash.` After a couple test spots, I found the paint on this car was not the typical butter soft jet black alot of us are used to, it was actually on the hard side.` I decided to go with one pass of M100 over the entire car and then concentrate with a few more passes on the areas that were damaged by the abrasive, spinning car wash brushes, which was mostly confined to the front and rear bumpers and a bit along the lower sides of the car.` I used my Rupes 21 with a Rupes MF Cutting pad for this step.` The M100/MF combo finished down nearly LSP ready, not what I was expecting on jet black but I`ll take it!` I decided to go with HD Speed as my final polish via the Rupes 21 and a white LC pad.` I went with Speed as I was sure it would remove any very light marring left from the M100 and also leave a slick, glossy, and protected finish in one step.` Being able to do the finish polish/LSP in one step meant I could spend a little more time on the correction and still stay within the customer`s budget.` The result was 100% correction of the car wash damage, and about 90% correction of the pre-existing swirls and RIDS.` The pictures below speak for themselves.


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A few 50/50 shots of the car wash damage on the rear bumper:


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50/50 of the swirls on the front fender:


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And some after shots.` Unfortunately the sun was going down when I was done.


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Thanks for looking!` And stay away from those car wash tunnels!!

[Dellinger]

Mr. Grasa... very nice job! `Nice 50/50!


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-Gabe

[Gray_Panther]

You turned it into a 2014 535i!!!` Great job

[tom p.]

Whoa!` That`s some serious damage after a couple washes.` Thanks for reminding why to avoid those automated wash systems.


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Great recovery, BTW, Rich!` Looking very nice.

[fdresq4]

Fantastic work and pics!

[zmcgovern45]

Very nice! Great photos!

[Richard Grasa]

Thanks guys

[DaGonz]

That looked like it was hammered by the Mighty Thor himself... nice turnaround!