Mikenap gets in over his head!

[jeff warden]

For an after Christmas present my wife backed our brand new Honda Odyssey into my M5, which was recently detailed with the help and advice of folks here. She feels terrible about it. The Honda will get a new rear bumper and wheel, and the M5 gets a new rear bumper and trim bits too. Okay, I`m done venting.

HUMBUG!

Jeff

"It`s just a car. It`s just a car. It`s just a car."

P.S.
Does anyone have a suggestion for removing rubber stripes from paint? The M5 bumper dragged along the side of the van.

[BradE]

Sorry to hear about that. On the bright side at least your M5 did not get any major damage, and now you can guilt her into letting you buy tons of car products A clay bar should work quite well at removing the rubber stripes left on the car, it make take a little bit of pressure but it should remove them all.



Good Luck!

[Brad B]

In my personal experience I can more easily accept these situations when it`s caused by your significant other. Trust me, I`ve been there recently. My wife scraped a huge series of scratches in my red leather in the Porsche. I forgave her. Be easy on your wife, too. It was an accident.



I would second the motion to use claybar first then I would go at it with Finesse It.



Good luck.



P.S. I don`t buy "It`s just a car." but let your wife know you love her AND the car!:p

[Lemonxxs]

Be sweet to that lady cause one day you will have an accident with the china or something.



Peace is a wonderful thing a state of mind a way of life.... We all could use more.......



Dayum I sound funky I need more beer.........brb... Gulp

[jeff warden]

<blockquote class=`ipsBlockquote` >

<em class=`bbc`>Originally posted by Guess My Name [/i]
<strong class=`bbc`>Be sweet to that lady cause one day you will have an accident with the china or something.

Dayum I sound funky I need more beer.........brb... Gulp [/b]</blockquote>
You said it Brother!

Actually she was forgiven the moment it happened. I couldn`t stay angry with her anyway. Like I said, she is much more upset than I am, probably because she knows how much time I spent polishing the things last weekend. :p

Cheers,

Jeff

[imported_memnuts]

I am impressed with your priorities. Our cars are important but can be replaced or repaired. True love is priceless.

Sorry about the accident but at least not one was physically hurt.

[mikenap]

First off, I want to say that this is more of a painful, longwinded anecdote than any kind of correction write-up. Second, and more importantly, I want to thank Sasha for both letting me work on his car and also for putting up with all the comments I made, mostly bad :wink:, about the condition of his car. Thanks for being a good sport!

So far in my short detailing "career", I`ve had my hands on a few cars ranging from Kias to BMWs. But we`ve all heard horror stories of how hard Audi paint can be and how difficult to correct it is. Enter my boy Sasha, who has a Brilliant Black Audi All-Road in pretty swirled-up condition. After talking about it for a bit, and brow-beating him regarding the overall condition of the car, we agreed I could have the car while he was out of town so I could experience the joy of Audi clearcoat for myself. I only had 2 days to work on it, so this was both a way to challenge myself on tempermental paint, and also to do what I could in the time given to improve the appearance a bit. About a week or two before dropping off the car, I had done a test spot via Flex/Megs burgandy pad/M105 to see what this car would need. I`ll come back to this later.

When the car was dropped off, I took a few before pics but many of them didn`t turn out. I`m still having a hard time with my camera while doing close-ups, so these are the best I have. I need to invest in a new camera soon, but for now this is all I have.









These pics give a general idea to the swirling, but probably due to the time of day, the camera couldn`t really capture what the defects looked like in person. During the wash stage, you could see there was no protection on the car, and probably hadn`t had any for a while. I didn`t bother with any sort of stripping wash, it obviously wasn`t needed, so I just washed with Meg`s Gold Class.





After a wash and clay, I threw some halogens on to get a better look at the paint. The first pic is pretty accurate as far as what I was working with, the close-up makes it look not as bad, but again my camera doesn`t handle close-ups well at all.





I didn`t tape up a section to do a 50/50 shot, so I polished up to the door line and tried to show it like that. This was after one round with 105/burgandy/Flex. The whole car was compounded with either this combo or 105/Surbuf/G110, since I wanted to see how that would work as well. It actually cut a bit better, but left noticeable haze compared to the burgandy pads.



Here are a few close-ups with my LED.







Much of the car had deep scratches that really weren`t as obvious until the lighter swirls were removed. The sides of the car had front-to-back scratches on the doors, but Sasha does a lot of mountain biking, so this car has probably been on some narrow dirt and gravel roads and been swiped by bushes or a fallen branch, etc. There were obvious deep marks at the edges of both front fenders that stopped at the hood that likely came from mechanics and Jiffy-Lube jockeys leaning against them while the hood was up. There where also some deep, deep scratches on the middle of the hood.




I`m not sure where these came from, unless Sasha has been hosting cock-fights on the hood of his car. They were deep and wide!

Anyway, instead of using my usual follow-up of 205, I decided to try 85rd on a black finishing pad. It`s been sitting on a shelf for a while and I never got around to using it so I figured I`d give it a shot here. Apparently, this is where things started to go really wrong for me!

Since I`m used to the 105/205 twins and don`t have much experience with Menz polishes, I went way too heavy on the 85rd. I worked it for a while, longer than I probably would 205, and it came off pretty easy. I used an IPA wipe to see what it looked like and was pretty happy with the results.





But I guess the oils didn`t come off nearly as well as I`d thought. After the finishing step, I foamed the car with a heavy concentration of Dawn, then rinsed and brought it inside for a final ONR wash before adding BFWD for protection. Everything was looking pretty good, but when it came time to remove the BF, it was streaking and hazing badly. I tried M34 to remove that haze, and it just made it worse. Then I used ONR at QD strength, and that removed the haze but on certain panels I started seeing light towel marks from my plushest towels.

You can even see in these pics how oily the sun refections look.













So I didn`t get the outcome I was hoping for, but I DID learn a good bit from working on this car.
First off, the condition was probably worse than a 2 day detail could be expected to fix to 100%. I knew it wouldn`t be perfect, and was hoping for 65-75% correction at best,but I didn`t realize how hard it really would be to correct, how deep some of the swirling was, and how many RIDS the car was plagued with.

Second, my first experience with 85rd wasn`t ideal. I need a lot more practice with this particular polish to learn all the ins and outs, so I can use it to its full potential, and not waste product as I clearly did here.

Also, I still have a hard time understanding how paint this hard to correct can also be this easy to mar at the same time. DSMS posted in another thread about his own experiences with Brilliant Black on his personal car, but it still seems counter-intuitive that it can be hard AND soft at the same time. It definitely is, it`s just hard to get my head around.

I`ve also told Sasha that due to the amount of oils left on the car, not to expect much longevity from BFWD in this case. When it dies down, I told him to call me and I`ll take care of it for him.

Thanks for reading. This car was every bit the challenge I was expecting, and I definitely fell short in a lot of areas. It was eye-opening to say the least, and made me so frustrated at times that I felt like just walking away from it. But I learned a lot from it, especially thanks to Michakaveli, who was always there whenever I had a question. In the end, I`m glad I did it, and hopefully Sasha will give me the opportunity to fix some of my mistakes down the road. It really goes to show that every car is different, and presents its own set of challenges. Learning how to deal with these is the only way to grow as a detailer. Thanks again guys!

[Lucian]

WOW, it almost felt like I was reading a Detailing Novel of some sort... Well, I can say it still looks better than it did in the begining.

[bmw5541]

The most likely reason for the streaking after you applied the BFWD, is that you applied the 85rd to heavy. You really need to use just a very thin coating to get the desired results.

Looks way better then before though. It is nice to be able to have a friend that is willing to let you tune up your procedures.

[mikenap]

WOW, it almost felt like I was reading a Detailing Novel of some sort... Well, I can say it still looks better than it did in the begining.

LOL, sorry for being so long-winded, I just wanted to explain what I was working with and my thought processes at the same time. Thanks for taking the time to actually read it though.

The most likely reason for the streaking after you applied the BFWD, is that you applied the 85rd to heavy. You really need to use just a very thin coating to get the desired results.

Looks way better then before though. It is nice to be able to have a friend that is willing to let you tune up your procedures.

Thanks Barry. I was actually talking to Michakaveli throughout this detail, mostly complaining. It wasn`t until it was too late for me to fix the problem that we figured out I overdid the 85rd. Once I told him how much I used per panel, he said the same thing. Waaaaaaay to much. Lesson learned though, now I know for next time!

[imported_Flash Gordon]

I don`t know what your ashamed of Mike. The after pics look terrific to me. (You are aware many posters doctor up there pics before posting, right?) Anyway, thanks for posting @ TruthInDetailing :

[mikenap]

I don`t know what your ashamed of Mike. The after pics look terrific to me. (You are aware many posters doctor up there pics before posting, right?) Anyway, thanks for posting @ TruthInDetailing :

Thanks Flash, I appreciate the kind words. In all honesty though, smeared sealant, oily paint and towel marks are plenty to feel embarrassed about. This car kicked my a** and the only saving grace was that it was for a friend, not someone shelling out money for the finished product!

And as far as doctored pics, I think everyone here either knows or can tell that I`m pretty green to this detail game, and I have a lot to learn. Bragging with some BS photoshopped crap gets me nowhere, makes me look stupid when the pics don`t match the actual car, and prevents me from learning from my mistakes. Truth in detailing, right? :thumbup:

[imported_Flash Gordon]

Bragging with some BS photoshopped crap gets me nowhere, makes me look stupid when the pics don`t match the actual car, and prevents me from learning from my mistakes. Truth in detailing, right? :thumbup:

Very refreshing to hear. I for the life of mr can`t figure out why some ppl doctor there work. How are they going to explain to a potential client why they couldn`t make there car look perfect like the ones on the internet :-?

As for all that mess you were dealing with. Before you apply your LSP. Wash the car with straight water or maybe a lil APC in the mix. This will get rid of that mess and give you a fresh surface for your LSP Da Rules!

[CEE DOG]

I don`t know what your ashamed of Mike. The after pics look terrific to me.

I agree. Nice work Mike! Good job on correction and you learned your lesson on the 85RD.

[imported_User Name]

I remember working on my brother in-law`s Audi A8 last year and I was using M105 on a 4" LC Pad with my G110 and my results weren`t nearly as good as yours.

I thought your results were great. Well done.

Those efn Audi`s are real b*stards to work on!