Bella Macchina: 2 Black G35's

Todd@RUPES

Todd@RUPES

Just a regular guy
First up is a G35 Sedan that I did for a forum member yesterday. This ’08 Nissan had the typical soft Nissan paint, though it wasn’t as bad as some of the previous G35/G37’s I have done. The goal was to make this car look like a new car deserved to look.

Sorry for the lack of before pictures.



Car was polished with several different steps and required a little creativity to finish it out hologram free. Because of the natural marring ability of the paint, we settled on Collonite as an LSP, over a RMG. This provides a great look on the perfectly prepped paint.



In the garage after LSP application…



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Perfect!

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Some of the photos are over exposed slightly, because the sun was playing peak- a- boo with the clouds so my lighting was all over the place. However, I think a lot of the pictures came out great!

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Next up is another Black G35, this one a coupe. This car was in horrendous shape, previously being hacked by one of the “top� detail shops in south Florida. There where wet sanding scratches, holograms, swirls, and dull spots. Brian and I had a lot of work to do, so there wasn’t a whole lot of time to document the work.



The car had terrible contamination and we needed aggressive clay to cut through it. After, we wet sanded a couple areas on the paint that were terrible, then polished out with between 5-9 steps on the various panels. For an LSP we went with Z5 x2.



Some before pictures of the hood…



You can see the terrible scratches from the various angles. These scratches covered 60-70 percent of the car…

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I highlighted some of the scratches with various arrows. Blue represents the bright scratches, and the green arrows help highlight of the darker, straight line scratches. Great job by the hack shop that promised to wetsand and buff the car, huh? Not only did they fail miserably at wetsanding (missing spots and failing to rebuff others) but they buffed with a dirty wool pad and really did a bang up job of ruining the finish.



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A close up of these nasty scratches…

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Here you can see that certain panels where lighter in appearance then other panels. This was because of the heavy and deep surface defects.

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And with the arrows, you can see the same scratch patterns as on the hood…

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After beating or heads against the wall trying to remove some of the defects on the soft paint, we knew the only way to catch these was to wet sand!

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Another angle…

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The top has been cut and has its gloss back, the bottom section is still dull…

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Several passes where required to fully remove the sanding marks.

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While the paint is clean and glossy, it still was a little gray. This time it was because of the compounding haze. The car finished out beautifully..

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Brian bringing the gloss back to the paint…

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And the hood…

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18 man hours later…

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dmcphee07SI said:
good job guys, its cool to see the wet sanding in steps like that
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Thanks! Its more fun to do... :P



Scottwax said:
Nice recovery on that 2nd G35.



What the hell happened to it in the first place?
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I added a new picture (the forum one on the second post) with a little explanation. A local "high end" shop offers a full detail (wet sand a buff). They kept my clients car for 7 days, and delievered it in that condition. Sanding scratchs, straight line scratches, un buffed sections, water etching, holograms, etc... The client stated that car looked good for a couple weeks after, so not only do we now have hack shops glazing cars, but apparently they wet sand with the same carelessness as they polish...
 
Bella work gentlemen! You can see that after wetsanding there is no OP left on the left front fender as compared to the door.
 
salty said:
Beautiful turn a rounds. 18 man hours, shows the time was taken to make it right.
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Thanks Salty. The fun ones are the ones that require the most work and present the biggest challenge :D



KnuckleBuckett said:
AMAZING! Good work! I need to learn how to deal with soft paint, as I am sure my LS430 is pretty soft.
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Moderatly soft paint= Great for detailers. Infiniti soft paint= some of the most frustrating time you can have. Not sure about the Lexus, but if its Infiniti soft, then I feel bad for you :(



baseballlover1 said:
another great one by todd and brian. So guys how does it feel to be the best detailers in the world (in my opinion) lol?
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Thanks Daniel. Honestly to be the "best detailesr in the world" is a great compliment, and is a factor of the whole or product being greater then the sum. With Brian and I, 1+1=3, if you know what I mean. With our passion, experience, and ability, we had better be able to turn out very high quality work (and, IMVHO, we do).



derekbmw said:
wow those look good
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Thank Derek!



artikxscout said:
wow nice. what pads and polish did you use to wetsand? i'm always scared to wetsand cars ...
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We sanded with 1500-2000-3000 I believe. As far as polishing a lot of different pads and polishes where used to tweak the soft paint to a great shine.



gmblack3a said:
Bella work gentlemen! You can see that after wetsanding there is no OP left on the left front fender as compared to the door.
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Thanks Bryan. 25 percent of the car was sanded (I would have prefered 100 percent but thats a different story), and came out very well.
 
You guys are a great team and do awesome work. You have a great climate and beautiful cars to work on.



Going into a job, that requires such drastic measures, what is your procedure to discuss the timetable and the work that will be involved, to the customer.
 
gmblack3a said:
Bella work gentlemen! You can see that after wetsanding there is no OP left on the left front fender as compared to the door.
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Bryan you should have seen in person the texture of that panel before, even if it wasn't as hacked up as it was, we probably would've straightened it out for him. His wife was watching while we sanded it down, she was a very patient spectator and said her husband would've freaked out.



Todd, very nice job on the 08, looks beautiful.:bow
 
I just wanted to jump in here to say what a great job Todd did on my car (the 1st G in this thread).

I had recently purchased the car, and it came with all kinds of swirls and light damage from the dealership. After researching and learning quite a bit about detailing and correction through autopia, I decided to get a professional to work on the car with the hope of at least getting out the more noticable scratches.

Todd came by this past weekend and the results are much better than I had expected. I can't believe how great this car looks (I thought it looked great before but what a huge difference).

Well worth the cost. But as they say on the infomercials.... That's not all!

Todd put up with me asking a thousand questions, educated me further on details of product, and even showed me how to use a porter cable machine.

All I can say is wow, and thanks Todd!
 
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