autoLavish VW Collection: Part I & II

[MarcHarris]

forgot some work from a couple of months back, so here you go guys:



First up: Deep Blue VW Passat Sedan "Brilloso por el AutoLavish" written by Jacob



Hey guys, keeping this one short and sweet, we have been super busy these last few weeks I'm also practicing my spanish



From the same owner as the red Jetta Wagon comes this beautiful deep blue B5 Passat. Also daily driven, and with 160k on the odometer. We wanted to do a 2 step polish on this one and really get its gloss back.



Other than needing a wash, the car was in good shape. We would deep clean, polish, and seal using the best products available. Budget was 5 hours.





As received:

wheels before:

Wheels after rinsing off Wheel Brightener and CG Sticky Gel:

Tips before:

Washing the engine:

Foaming for wash:

Taped for polishing:

After M105 via Flex Rotary and Blue Hydro Pad:



(focused on scratch on purpose )

 

[MarcHarris]

After M205 via Flex DA and Tangerine Hydro Pad:

Back to before:

and after:

Apllying Blackfire via PC and Blue Pad:

Aquapel applied:

All done (except aquapel final wipe). Not bad for 160k miles

 

[MarcHarris]

Next up: "B5 Burgundy Passat Wagon Buffed by AutoLavish"



There seems to be a deep following specifically for the B5 VW/Audi. The owner of this B5 can own pretty much any VW/Audi he desires, but loves his B5. He picked it up early this year for a song and a dance. Once purchased, new grill and headlights were swapped on. That’s about it for mods. The 3.0L and manual trans prove enough for daily driving amusement



This car used to belong to a housewife "with 2 rambunctious kids" who, we concluded, lived on a dirt road and had to drive through bushes every day to get home. There was no other way to get the amount and severity of RIDS this car had. Keep in mind while you see the pictures, this car had already been polished at least once this year, we suspect with a compound like M80 and a wool pad. You will see the residue in many of the pictures. Most of the white stuff is residue, not wax.

Swirls:

Plate was removed to clean behind it:

The door jambs needed some love. We used our typical cleaner for this: Megs Body Solvent. Does just that Sprayed it on, let sit for 45 seconds, agitate with various brushes, wipe off with dry MF towel. We rinsed it off afterwards with a heavy concentration of Optima No-Rinse solution in a pressure sprayer. They were bad, and although not 100%, cleaned up quite well. They remain, however, very swirled. It would have taken M105 by hand and at least another 2 hours to clear up the swirls. But for a daily driver, it is just out of the scope of what the owner is willing to pay for. Or we could do them in the spring







Befores:

Afters:

The car needed a wash! It was foamed with CG Citrus W&C + APC, let dwell for a few minutes, rinsed, foamed again, washed, rinsed, clayed, foamed, rinsed. MF Towels and the leaf blower were used to dry it. But...





... no pics







Here are the wheels after...

 

[MarcHarris]

... and the engine after:

We then taped it up and proceeded to polish. The swirls were bad. The RIDS were terrible. We tested a portion of a fender (since the sun was low already) with M205 on an orange pad on the Makita rotary, and found it to do very little to correct. It finished down fine, even with the orange pad. Hard clear cote. Deep RIDS.



Next was to use M105 on the orange pad. It corrected better, but still after 3 passes with this combo, many RIDS remained. We figured this was as good as it was going to get for the time allotted, but needed to hasten up the pace.

Marc had this yellow brick with velcro called the LLC yellow foam pad. We still did a few passes with this pad and M105, but upped the power to the Flex rotary. RIDS were winning the battle. After 3 hard passes with the yellow/M105 only 3 micrometers of clear were removed! This car needed wet sanding. But a daily driver can only dream of such extravagances!

After the M105, we needed to clear up the trails left from compounding. Trying to save as much time as possible, we tried Meg's Reconditioning Creme D151 (an AIO type product with correction abilities) on the PC with an orange pad. With one quick pass it cleared up all the trails and marring, and finished the paint to a crisp gloss. We added a quick coat of Blackfire via PC for better winter longevity.

But the RIDS and deep swirls remained

Overall we took about 5 hours on this one, and only did the exterior. But now we know what to prepare for in the Spring. If the owner wants to eliminate the RIDS, we will wet sand. If not, a quick one-step should be all that’s needed to bring back this gloss.

 

[Alex Boyce]

amazing gloss Marc, great work as always!

 

[Rickrack]

Wow, you guys did wonders for only having 5 hours to work on each car!!



How are you liking the Hydro-tech pads?



Great work guys!

 

[VitoB]

Great work guys, I always enjoy reading your posts!



I'm just curious, did you try any wool pads on the Red VW Passat Wagon to see what results they would have given you since the clear coat was very hard?



Lack of time can be our worst enemy as detailers, not being able to work longer at it due to the owner not willing to pay more, knowing we could have produced even better results if we had more time.



I appreciate your honesty, showing that when detailing daily drivers, perfection is not always possible due to variables that are usually beyond our control.



Again, great work as always.



Cheers and Happy New Year.

 

[MarcHarris]

amazing gloss Marc, great work as always!

Thanks you for the kind words :wavey

Wow, you guys did wonders for only having 5 hours to work on each car!!



How are you liking the Hydro-tech pads?



Great work guys!

Thanks Rick, 10 man-hours well spent on each and a very happy client! The hydro-tech pads seem to be nice. I like how thin they are, and they seem to be very smooth on both the makita and flex while still yielding good cut.

Great work guys, I always enjoy reading your posts!

I'm just curious, did you try any wool pads on the Red VW Passat Wagon to see what results they would have given you since the clear coat was very hard?

Lack of time can be our worst enemy as detailers, not being able to work longer at it due to the owner not willing to pay more, knowing we could have produced even better results if we had more time.

I appreciate your honesty, showing that when detailing daily drivers, perfection is not always possible due to variables that are usually beyond our control.

Again, great work as always.

Cheers and Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to you too. I appreciate the kind words and we also feel its very important to be honest and upfront about everything we do. All detailers know there are some things that just aren't possible. It wouldn't have been impossible to get the red one to 98%+, it just would have been impossible to do so in 5 hours while still cleaning wheels, the engine bay, claying and prepping the paint for polishing.

The problem wasn't so much we weren't using aggressive combos on this car, but that the defects on it were so plentiful and deep that you really have to pick your battles. I find nothing to be more of a pain in the butt than defects on a hard clear-coat. Anything that can cause damage to hard clears had to have some serious power. These aren't your every-day-swirls. The light swirls came out quite quickly, but other combos were tried to attempt to get rid of the "washed with rocks" defects. We considered using either purple or yellow wool, but didn't want to turn this into a three-step correction as that could quickly go over budget.

Lastly, this car was purchased used, and the new owner will be taking very good care of it, so there's no need to thin the clear right away. We left plenty of room for future polishing while adding lots of gloss and refreshening the appearance.



I agree that time hacks can be very frustrating - we wish we could fully bring back each car we work on. You do begin to see things in new ways when you have time constraints, and as always, we're proud of what we were able to accomplish in a short amount of time with each of these



Thanks for the feedback all!

 

[David Fermani]

Blackfire made those cars look amazing! I love the how much glow you captured in the afters. You guys do great work!

 

[TSC17]

Nice work fellas! It just goes to show that sometimes you don't have to get near 100% to (a) make the car look a whole lot better, and (b) make the customer very happy. You did a tremendous job in the short amount of time you had to work with and probably made the car look better than the customer had imagined!

 

[MarcHarris]

Blackfire made those cars look amazing! I love the how much glow you captured in the afters. You guys do great work!

Nice work fellas! It just goes to show that sometimes you don't have to get near 100% to (a) make the car look a whole lot better, and (b) make the customer very happy. You did a tremendous job in the short amount of time you had to work with and probably made the car look better than the customer had imagined!

Much appreciated, especially coming from two of my favorite pro detailers. David, we've had a lot of good experiences with Blackfire with not just looks, but good durability as well. Todd, very much so and we work hard to give clients what they're looking for

 

[agpatel]

How do you like the Gloss-It backing plate compared to the 3m one?



Nice work, love my dubs!

 

[Bertoneman]

Good work.

 

[RaskyR1]

Excellent work guys, and great turn around on both cars! That's a lot of correction in, especially given the short period of time you had. :2thumbs:



Rasky

 

[Tru_Shine]

Awsome job! they are so glossy!

 

[imported_DJ Mayo]

Yup, another great job. What else would we expect? Hope your holidays were great fellas.