Black GMC Clean Up

[mgm2003]

This past weekend I had to pleasure to detail a 2007 Black GMC Truck.

The owner picked it up last Fall and has done several tasteful mod’s to the truck: de-badged, wheels, tires, exhaust, and a few performance upgrades to the engine.

He cleaned, painted, and cleared ALL exposed pieces in the undercarriage, including the inner wheels. It was something to see. I didn’t have to do a thing to the wells, because they weren’t much more than dusty.

The owner was concerned about the dealer installed swirl marks, and overall condition of the paint. It sounded *bad* over the phone but I`ve seen worse He wanted the paint *perfect*.

The truck had light/moderate swirls, a few holograms from the rotary (debadging), and a spot on the hood from wet sanding out a paint chip. Nothing crazy.

The owner was also interested in an update on detailing products, process, etc….
He brought along a vintage Black and Decker Rotary (built like a tank), a collection of wool pads, and a few body shop products. We left these safely stored in the bed of the truck

This was going to be a Porter Cable 7424 job.

I borrowed my neighbors PC for the owner, and we both ‘plugged in’ and we went to town.
This one took both of us ~ 5 hours, and I’d say we corrected 90% of the defects, all of which were light/moderate (nothing crazy).

Here’s a re-cap of the process we used:

Foam gun & sheepskins for the car wash

Dressing on the tires & bumper pads

Polish (Paint, Glass, Chrome)

PC @ 5 using LC CCS green light cutting pads, and a SMR

PC @ 5 using LC CCS red finishing pads, and an AIO/finishing polish

LSP = Sealer x 2

The wheels were protected by hand using an AIO product by hand, and the tires were dressed.

[Troy@Protekt]

That looks almost as good as if I would have done it. j/k

Great work. Pretty wild working side by side with the owner I bet.

The last car I did before going on vacation about did me in. It was an abused black 350Z and the paint was a bear to work on. I would have liked having the owner out there buffing beside me on that one. Not only was she cute but it would have taught her to take better care of her car.

Troy

[LikeaRock]

Great work I`ve always liked working with newer black GM vehicles, it`s a black that always gives great results!

[cwcad]

Great work!! Of I would expect no less from such a fine detailer.

Love the Black. When polished it is the best color out there!!

[The Chee]

Superb work John , what dilution did you use for the foam gun?

[mgm2003]

Thanks guys! I appreciate the comments and so does the owner (who did 50% of the work on this one).

Chee, I use the foam gun 9 ways to Sunday, all depending on the time of year.

On My Vehicles.....

During pollen season (now), I typically mix 1/2 cup of Meg`s Gold Class in the jug and run the gun at `full foam`, after I rinse the paint.

While the foam settles on the paint, I clean the tires, wheels, and wells (then rinse them down)

Next, I rinse down the paint (to remove the pollen build up/foam) and re-foam the vehicle to prep for washing.

Past that I use a few mitts and a 5 gallon bucket of water/wash mix to clean the paint -then do a final rinse down.

It may sound crazy or complicated, but it works well on black paint . I`ve had good luck with this method (if it makes any sense) during pollen season.


On Details....

I use the same mix. The difference being....

I rinse, foam, then clean with a mitt and dry off. If I`m planning to polish out defects on the paint I pay more attention to cleaning out the jams & crevices --to avoid picking up drips with soil/dirt/sand on my polishing pads.

Make sense?