2002 Jet Black E46 M3

Audios S6

Audios S6

New member
This car came to me from a coworker. I do not make a point to advertise at work as it is against the company policy (the girl scouts can get away with it, but no one else). We are both into cars and frequently take friendly jabs at each other over BWM and Audi. He will be putting his car away for winter soon and wanted to know what wax I use. After recommending BFWD and mentioning that it would be tough for him to go through a bottle even with 3 cars, he asked how I go through a bottle and realized that I do detailing.

I frequently park next to him in our ramp, but it's underground, quite dark and I never really got a good look at the paint. When it arrived at 11pm I only got a look at it under the fluorescent lights, but it was clear there was a lot of work to be done. Swirls, scratches, marring, chips, rubber transfer, etching, you name it this car had it.

The owner was most concerned with the swirls and chips. This would be the main focus of the effort, although there was plenty that needed to be done, just to get to the swirls and chips.



Couple shots on arrival:

Swirl city




Paint Chips and etching


rubber transfer from bike handle


etching from something dumped out the window presumably




etching and rubber transfer


Nasty RID


Due to the timing and touch-ups needing time to dry, I jumped right into a rinseless wash of the hood and trunk, then iron-x and the nanoskin autoscrub. Chips were filled in and allowed to dry over night. A test spot was also performed on the trunk before turning in for the night.

Clay after a small portion of the hood


Test spot


Next morning is was time for a proper inspection under the sun along with another look at the test spot.

Faded Trim


old bugs


bugs, dust, dirt, water spots


At least the wheels weren't completely caked with brake dust and the side marker isn't terribly hazy


waterspots, haze and general filth


More filth


exhaust and bumper probably not cleaning in 12 years






We probably can't find any other type of defect can we? SURE WE CAN!!!! what was maybe gum on the trim (or something else from a mammal's mouth)
 
Horror show now over, and checking the test spot in full sun. Meg MF cutting disk and D300 on rupes followed by LC gray and Menz sf4500 on rotary followed by prep sol wipe down.


Foam bath - Ultimate snow foam presoak


Wheels with Ardex Proper & permanon platinum
Tires with Megs D108 & Car pro PERL
Exhaust with 0000 steel wool followed by P21S polishing soap
2BM with CG Citrus wash + gloss
Decon with Iron-x, mother yellow clay, nanoskin autoscrub and ONR lube
Chips wetsanded with 1500 and 3000 grit on HF 2" air sander
Paint Correction as noted above
LSP - based on forum feedback: BFWD
Trim - new and old UTTG+. I think I prefer the old formula on this plastic.


1500 sanding


3000 grit sanding


Light at the end of the tunnel. About 14 hours total.




































Thanks for reading. Questions and comments welcome.
 
Thanks mike. It definitely had some challenges. Fortunately it did not appear to have been detailed before and there was plenty of paint build to work with. If you didn't notice, it is missing the passenger side roof gutter insert; the underlying paint was probably the best looking part before I started.
 
Really nice work! How did the owner react when he saw it? He had to have been blown away...
 
XxBoostinxX said:
Beautiful work! Just out of curiosity, did you clay and nanoscrub?
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I used a combination. I used the nanoskin da pad for most of it, but for the bumpers I used clay bar.

I also used clay bar on the hood due to all the chips; didn't want to risk the pad picking up any of the paint on the edge of the chips.
 
wdmaccord said:
Great job!! Did you do any aftershots of the exhaust and trim?
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I'll have to take a look at all the files. I was pretty rushed at the end. The exhaust came back about 90%. If I spent another 30 minutes it could have been near 100%

You can see in a couple of the hood pics that the vent piece still had some white areas. The water based UTTG looked great for an hour and then the white came back a bit. The old formula worked great on the wiper cowl. If I had the chance to start over it would have all been all old versionl UTTG.
 
Angus said:
Really nice work! How did the owner react when he saw it? He had to have been blown away...
Click to expand...


Thanks. I've sat next to or very near him at work for 10 years. I don't think I've ever heard so many expletives, an we deal with construction workers daily.
 
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