Restoring a 2016 BMW 435 M Sport

This summer I traded in my trusty GTI on a 2016 435 M Sport. The car was in perfect mechanical shape, clear mechanical history, and low mileage. However, the paint was pretty rough. Either the dealership or the previous owner hadn`t been kind. So the weekend after I brought it home I spent getting it into the shape it deserved.

Rather than writing it all up again I`ll just point you to the post I did on my blog with plenty of photos: https://thecargeek.net/full-detailing-a-2016-bmw-435i/

Not only was the exterior neglected, but so was the interior. The first photo here shows what it looked like after going around my steering wheel with McKee`s 37 AIO Leather Cleaner and the second one is a 50/50 of the steering wheel using McKee`s 37 Interior protectant. I had other photos of the interior, but black leather isn`t very photogenic and the differences were hard to see in person and nearly impossible to photograph.

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Since the audience of the blog isn`t the well educated detailing crowd here, I`ll share a few other items I didn`t bother to write about before.

- Heat made the job significantly harder. The forecast was for temps in the low 80`s, but it actually turned out to hit 89 and the heat index was around 100~103 due to high humidity. It was easily 90 degrees in my garage. This meant the polish turned sticky and was really hard to remove, pads were rotated much quicker because they heated up quickly and I had a hard time keeping hydrated all day

- When CarPro says UK can be applied in conditions up to 90 degrees, I think it`s a little optimistic. I was at that threshold and it was not fun to apply. It became a little hard to spread, but the humidity meant it took several minutes to flash and even after flashing it wasn`t really drying. This made buffing out high spots a nightmare because of smears.

- After finding a few smears and high spots I attempted to polish them out. This lead me to another discovery: despite how it looks in pictures, the coating wasn`t applied very smoothly and in some large areas was actually muting the metallic flake and wasn`t very clear. The areas I polished out were far glossier and actually less dark than the original application areas.

The weather won and I realize I never should have taken on the job in the middle of summer. In the end, when I had a cooler weekend three weeks ago, I polished out the ENTIRE car again with a light finishing polish and applied a couple of layers of CanCoat since I ran out of CQuartz UK. I dare say it looks even better now than in the pictures. I don`t hold anything against the CQuartz, I just tried to use it well outside it`s performance envelope. I`ve never had any issues the other three times I`ve applied it to other vehicles.

Desertnate- Hey, good work! Heh heh, when I first read your title I thought to myself "gee, what kind of "restoration" could be required on such a new BMW?"

Desertnate -
Hope this finds you and yours well !
Loved your post and especially your Blog - thanks for the link to it.
Your Bimmer is so Beautiful ! Wow ! Nothing looks better than a black vehicle properly finished..
Have had lots of and made many more rolling black mirrors.. You sir, have done the same !
Beautiful job !
Thanks for all this work AND the awesome work on your Blog.
Dan F

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Originally Posted by Accumulator

Desertnate- Hey, good work! Heh heh, when I first read your title I thought to myself "gee, what kind of "restoration" could be required on such a new BMW?"

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Funny you should say that. When I first saw the car and took it out for the initial test drive the sky was cloudy and the car was pretty dirty due to a really windy thunderstom which blew through the night before. The dealership is under construction so EVERYTHING was covered in dirt and the rain didn`t help. At that point it didn`t look *too* bad. Later in the morning I took a second, longer test drive and drove it home. At that point the sun came out and I was shocked. I told my wife it looked like someone washed it with a broom.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stokdgs

Desertnate -
Hope this finds you and yours well !
Loved your post and especially your Blog - thanks for the link to it.
Your Bimmer is so Beautiful ! Wow ! Nothing looks better than a black vehicle properly finished..
Have had lots of and made many more rolling black mirrors.. You sir, have done the same !
Beautiful job !
Thanks for all this work AND the awesome work on your Blog.
Dan F

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Thank you for the kind words! I was really happy it turned out so well. Going in, I was simply hoping to make a big improvement and then work on refining it further over time. Everything turned out much better than I hoped.

Great write up and a wonderful transformation. How hard is the paint? Is it as soft as I hear BMW black is?

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Originally Posted by Bill D

Great write up and a wonderful transformation. How hard is the paint? Is it as soft as I hear BMW black is?

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Thanks!

My understanding is BMW black paints vary. I believe the solid black is pretty soft, while the black metallic paint like what is on my car is much harder. I found the paint to be a little easier to correct than the Black Metallic on my previous VW, but no where near as soft as what you`d find on a Japanese car like a Honda or Toyota.

Nice work on that! The before and afters/50/50`s sure tell a story!

Super nice job. Bmw dark colors are super soft. If this is a long term keeper consider ppf then coating.

Really. Ice turn around.