This was by far one of the most interesting details we ever came across. From how we got the job, the fact that it was our first detail on a car worth more than 200k and that this would be a dual detail in that after this car we would be doing the owners OTHER car ....a Ferrari 458 Italia...but lets not get ahead of ourselves, i'll start from the beginning.
I was online a few weeks back and saw on one of the sites that i advertise on that the owner of a Ferrari and Porsche Panamera was looking for a full detail on both cars and a follow up maintenance every couple of weeks after this. Needless to say my eyes got rather wide as, you just do NOT see requests like that for those types of cars very often...if ever. To just have an open request like that and to list that those were the cars he was looking to get detailed was rare indeed!
So I of course replied right away to the request saying that viewing the cars in person and talking to him about what he wants to have done would be the best way to go about doing this, in my opinion. Well, 9 days went by....no reply...nothin. So on the one hand i thought, well maybe he already found someone else, on the other hand i figured...it won't hurt to send a follow up email, so i did. THIS time he replied and surprisingly enough he had not yet hired anyone, but instead left his # for me to call so we could set up a time for us to be able to check out the cars. I didn't get the email till the next morning and as i was reading the email...he calls me! We spoke for a few minutes, he was giving me some history on the cars and got around to telling me...these aren't babied exotics....no, they were their daily drivers. Not only that but they frequented the track quite often to run these babies as they were meant to be. We arranged to take a look at the rides later that afternoon.
We showed up around 2, he was out front, said hello and then went inside to pop the garage for us to check out the Ferrari first. He pulled it and wow...what a car. Red of course (as a Ferrari should be) and also swirled lol. We talked about options for it, decided on a full correction, engine detail and interior. Shortly thereafter we took a look at the Porsche...and this is what we saw:
....goodnight...it was filthy, it was black and it was swirled up the ying yang! But hey, this is what we do so...not a big deal. After speaking with the owners we found that not only were these two both passionate about their cars...not only did they both DRIVE their cars but on top of that, they were very cool and down to earth people. THIS was going to be a fun couple of details...if we got the job.
After talking a bit more with the owner, he informed us that he had either 11 or 13 responses to the request he had put up, 6 alone in our city, but that he had a good feeling about us, that he liked what he was hearing as far as our approach and knowledge of what we'd be doing...and then he told us that on top of all that....he admired the fact that we followed up our first email with a second one. He said it showed him that...we wanted the work. We weren't being pests, but were being thorough and just covering our bases and to him, that said that we WANTED the work, where others he spoke to once and never heard back.
I had never given it much though, as i usually like to follow up with customers, potential or existing, to see if they are still interested, or for existing customers, to see if they are completely satisfied. Apparently it is a good thing to do .
SO, we set a date! This was early in the week but, he wanted them done ASAP, i think he would have let us start right then if we had wanted lol, but we were booked the whole week up until Saturday. He said ok, lets do it Saturday then. Then we told him we'd need a day per car so the Ferrari would have to be done a second day. He kind of smiled at us and said something along the lines of "Oh you weren't kidding about needing the car all day huh? My last detailers spent 7 1/2 hours and were able to do both cars." The way he said it though, we could tell he was kind of intrigued as to what exactly we'd be doing that would take so much longer....well, he would soon find out
Date set, car set....week went by and Saturday morning came.
NO, i did not post the wrong photo here. That LR4 shown above....thats what we had just finished Friday. 9 a.m -9 p.m. Full correction, full interior and Opti-Coat. THAT big beast is what we were coming off of. On top of that we only had about 4 hours of sleep as we were a bit excited and amped up to be doing this Porsche the next day.
We decided that the best approach for the Porsche would be to wash it first while it was still somewhat cool out. Note we're in the desert and we were already breaking triple digits and this drive way and full sun exposure. We'd get it washed, dried and then i would start on the engine (which NORMALLY i would do first but, we had to make adjustments) while my sis started on the interior.
My sister...well...she was still feeling the effects from the 12 hour marathon from the day prior....can you tell?
Our first exotic detail Dani...what do you think! "I'm f***ing tired" hahahaha. You see though...my sis when tired is kind of like a diesel engine. Might be a bit slow to get going, but once she starts a freight train couldn't stop her. I'll put it this way, ill take her work TIRED over anyone elses when they're fresh and ready to go. Nevertheless...this was a funny freakin picture lol!
Now for what you've been waiting for...the paint condition...well first...lets look at the 18 lbs of dirt thats on it. We had 2 dust/rain storms in the past 2 weeks....and it hadn't been washed in just as long:
Now in this picutre...yes...there is a ton of dirt, but look in the upper left hand corner hahaha.....yeahhhhhhh she's still waking up!
She's thinking "Are you done with the damn pictures yet? Can we start already...." Along with "Didn't we JUST do this yesterday, and tomorrow we have the Ferrari!" Oh i forgot to mention we also had a full correction on a Camaro that same week on Wednesday...point being, it had been a LONG week....but hey, its what we do.
We also found a bit of an oopsy...i'm THINKING this was probably done from previous detailers, kinda looked like all purpose cleaner was sprayed on and they forgot to rinse it off and it stained (as APC will do).
As for the swirls...well...just look:
The swirls were not bias, they were high, low and in between. Here is the roof:
So as you can see, even through the loads of dirt, we had a TON of swirls on this paint. On top of that, there were water spots and just a LOT of down right cleaning to do to even get the car preped properly before we could ever think about polishing.
First up...the tires and rims. Oh yeah, i forgot to show you those huh?
You see fast cars tend to need good brakes lol. And good brakes tend to dust A LOT. As you can see these guys were coated witha a nice thick layer of brake dust, with a little desert red dirt mixed in. Not fun....but thats why we do these first. No since washing a car just to end up splattering this crap all over the paint that you just cleaned. And let me tell you, it took more than a quick spray and rinse to get these guys back into what we'd consider acceptable shape....
Here is a close up...note it managed to find its way around the lug nuts...nice and thick there as well:
Here is the cleaner dwelling, breaking down the mounds of dust:
Next it was time to scrub. This was about 1/2 way through the process. I usually scurb the bottom part first. If you start at the top you will end up having water from your brush dripping down and diluting your cleaner that is still dwelling, thus reducing its ability to break down the break dust. The bad part...due to a thing called gravity...the top portion has a tendancy to DRY first...so be sure you keep that top part wet with cleaner while you are scrubbing the lower parts. Wheel cleaner drying on the rims is a no no...
Scrub time:
As you can see, not just the face of the rims gets cleaned. You've gotta get deep in the barrels and man this thing had some DEEP barrels! My brush was just long enough to reach the back.
Gotta get in between the tight spots too...
Note the multiple brushes in the bucket. All were needed and all were used.
Small brush for lug nuts and calipers
Some spots took a couple of applications but...hey, they turned out pretty good don't you think?
Next we did a prep wash on the car. Pressure washed the loose dirt free (didn't help much, most of this was baked on), then foamed it up and gave it a thorough wash. Pressure washed it again, dried it and then popped the hood and made a discovery! Apparently the dust bowl did not end, it just got swallowed up by this monster engine!
Heres a couple quick foam pics:
(Note in real time i took these pics just before the wash, thus the reason for the visible dirt on the front quarter panels)
This engine is a beast! A freakin sedan that can do 0-60 in under 4 seconds....really? Now THATS a family car! Right now however...it's filthy....
After a very careful pressure wash, followed by spraying APC to small sections of the engine bay at a time, aggitating with several brushes and then rinsing clean....I then applied a dresseding to the engine bay and spray wax to all painted surfaces. Here is our transformation...
Before from a different angle:
And after:
And of course the head on before was the most explicit in showing the amount of dust that had accumulated:
But the head on after was equally as explicit in showing the beautiful turn around
After wiping down the areas that i had gotten wet with the pressure washer (mainly the quarter panels) we grabbed a few more photos of the swirls/scratches throughout the car, but this time without the layers of dirt.
The clear bra had the worst of it...only so much could be done for it. But we were able to improve it. Now for the actual PAINT:
Oh yeah, it was bad.
REALLY freakin bad...
What do you get when you put a black car - use it as a daily driver, take it to the track and add in some dust storms and rain at the same time...You get this:
Well, now we had clean swirls! I should say somewhat clean swirls...because again, before we touched it with a polisher, it had to be squeeky clean...and right now it was rid of obvious dirt but, there was still a noticeable drag to the paint...obviously a clay bar was needed next.
We pulled it into the garage so i could start claying while Dani continued the interior detail.
The clay bar never lies....while this car looks nice and clean in the shade...the clay bar told another story:
This was after doing about half the hood....gross,, seriously gross. If you're detailer isn't claying....they aren't detailing. This is SUCH an essential and neccessary step even on cars that APPEAR clean...that includes brand new ones.
I continued around the car...my sis did the same and as usual we finished about the same time. She then started taping of the trim while i got the polishers ready.
While she finished up with the tape...i started inspecting the paint one last time inside the garage with the door closed and the halogens set up. We always use multiple light sources to view the true condition of the paint...though i think a candle in this case would have shown that this paint was in DESPERATE need of polishing. Here's what we found:
Ouch...
Sun gun on the door:
The Porsche lettering was not looking so good:
Below the window on the door....
Gas tank....
Close up anyone??
Even the pillars were in sad shape:
Up above the door handle
This area here was particularly lovely...
The halogen lights showed the damage quite well too
Can you sayyyyyyyyyyyyy deep...
This picture here pretty much says it all....
So all in all...you get an idea as to the condition of the paint. Deep scratches and THOUSANDS of them....we had some work to do.
After performing a test spot on the hood and making a few tweaks to our technique we were able to pin down our process for this swirled mess. The Flex along with Optimum MF cutting pad and Meguiars 105 followed by Lake Country Polishing pad and 205 yielded a beautiful finish. Some areas took a couple of extra passes with the compounding process, but hey like i said before, thats what we do.
Lets revisit this photo one more time:
We turned this, into this:
Look, its metallic! This paint was a bit tricky to compound in some spots but, we pretty much knew what we had to do. My sis picked up the Griots and followed behind me doing all the polishing while i pushed ahead doing the compounding. Let me tell you something...this car had a LOT of paint and a LOT of area to cover.
I was online a few weeks back and saw on one of the sites that i advertise on that the owner of a Ferrari and Porsche Panamera was looking for a full detail on both cars and a follow up maintenance every couple of weeks after this. Needless to say my eyes got rather wide as, you just do NOT see requests like that for those types of cars very often...if ever. To just have an open request like that and to list that those were the cars he was looking to get detailed was rare indeed!
So I of course replied right away to the request saying that viewing the cars in person and talking to him about what he wants to have done would be the best way to go about doing this, in my opinion. Well, 9 days went by....no reply...nothin. So on the one hand i thought, well maybe he already found someone else, on the other hand i figured...it won't hurt to send a follow up email, so i did. THIS time he replied and surprisingly enough he had not yet hired anyone, but instead left his # for me to call so we could set up a time for us to be able to check out the cars. I didn't get the email till the next morning and as i was reading the email...he calls me! We spoke for a few minutes, he was giving me some history on the cars and got around to telling me...these aren't babied exotics....no, they were their daily drivers. Not only that but they frequented the track quite often to run these babies as they were meant to be. We arranged to take a look at the rides later that afternoon.
We showed up around 2, he was out front, said hello and then went inside to pop the garage for us to check out the Ferrari first. He pulled it and wow...what a car. Red of course (as a Ferrari should be) and also swirled lol. We talked about options for it, decided on a full correction, engine detail and interior. Shortly thereafter we took a look at the Porsche...and this is what we saw:
....goodnight...it was filthy, it was black and it was swirled up the ying yang! But hey, this is what we do so...not a big deal. After speaking with the owners we found that not only were these two both passionate about their cars...not only did they both DRIVE their cars but on top of that, they were very cool and down to earth people. THIS was going to be a fun couple of details...if we got the job.
After talking a bit more with the owner, he informed us that he had either 11 or 13 responses to the request he had put up, 6 alone in our city, but that he had a good feeling about us, that he liked what he was hearing as far as our approach and knowledge of what we'd be doing...and then he told us that on top of all that....he admired the fact that we followed up our first email with a second one. He said it showed him that...we wanted the work. We weren't being pests, but were being thorough and just covering our bases and to him, that said that we WANTED the work, where others he spoke to once and never heard back.
I had never given it much though, as i usually like to follow up with customers, potential or existing, to see if they are still interested, or for existing customers, to see if they are completely satisfied. Apparently it is a good thing to do .
SO, we set a date! This was early in the week but, he wanted them done ASAP, i think he would have let us start right then if we had wanted lol, but we were booked the whole week up until Saturday. He said ok, lets do it Saturday then. Then we told him we'd need a day per car so the Ferrari would have to be done a second day. He kind of smiled at us and said something along the lines of "Oh you weren't kidding about needing the car all day huh? My last detailers spent 7 1/2 hours and were able to do both cars." The way he said it though, we could tell he was kind of intrigued as to what exactly we'd be doing that would take so much longer....well, he would soon find out
Date set, car set....week went by and Saturday morning came.
NO, i did not post the wrong photo here. That LR4 shown above....thats what we had just finished Friday. 9 a.m -9 p.m. Full correction, full interior and Opti-Coat. THAT big beast is what we were coming off of. On top of that we only had about 4 hours of sleep as we were a bit excited and amped up to be doing this Porsche the next day.
We decided that the best approach for the Porsche would be to wash it first while it was still somewhat cool out. Note we're in the desert and we were already breaking triple digits and this drive way and full sun exposure. We'd get it washed, dried and then i would start on the engine (which NORMALLY i would do first but, we had to make adjustments) while my sis started on the interior.
My sister...well...she was still feeling the effects from the 12 hour marathon from the day prior....can you tell?
Our first exotic detail Dani...what do you think! "I'm f***ing tired" hahahaha. You see though...my sis when tired is kind of like a diesel engine. Might be a bit slow to get going, but once she starts a freight train couldn't stop her. I'll put it this way, ill take her work TIRED over anyone elses when they're fresh and ready to go. Nevertheless...this was a funny freakin picture lol!
Now for what you've been waiting for...the paint condition...well first...lets look at the 18 lbs of dirt thats on it. We had 2 dust/rain storms in the past 2 weeks....and it hadn't been washed in just as long:
Now in this picutre...yes...there is a ton of dirt, but look in the upper left hand corner hahaha.....yeahhhhhhh she's still waking up!
She's thinking "Are you done with the damn pictures yet? Can we start already...." Along with "Didn't we JUST do this yesterday, and tomorrow we have the Ferrari!" Oh i forgot to mention we also had a full correction on a Camaro that same week on Wednesday...point being, it had been a LONG week....but hey, its what we do.
We also found a bit of an oopsy...i'm THINKING this was probably done from previous detailers, kinda looked like all purpose cleaner was sprayed on and they forgot to rinse it off and it stained (as APC will do).
As for the swirls...well...just look:
The swirls were not bias, they were high, low and in between. Here is the roof:
So as you can see, even through the loads of dirt, we had a TON of swirls on this paint. On top of that, there were water spots and just a LOT of down right cleaning to do to even get the car preped properly before we could ever think about polishing.
First up...the tires and rims. Oh yeah, i forgot to show you those huh?
You see fast cars tend to need good brakes lol. And good brakes tend to dust A LOT. As you can see these guys were coated witha a nice thick layer of brake dust, with a little desert red dirt mixed in. Not fun....but thats why we do these first. No since washing a car just to end up splattering this crap all over the paint that you just cleaned. And let me tell you, it took more than a quick spray and rinse to get these guys back into what we'd consider acceptable shape....
Here is a close up...note it managed to find its way around the lug nuts...nice and thick there as well:
Here is the cleaner dwelling, breaking down the mounds of dust:
Next it was time to scrub. This was about 1/2 way through the process. I usually scurb the bottom part first. If you start at the top you will end up having water from your brush dripping down and diluting your cleaner that is still dwelling, thus reducing its ability to break down the break dust. The bad part...due to a thing called gravity...the top portion has a tendancy to DRY first...so be sure you keep that top part wet with cleaner while you are scrubbing the lower parts. Wheel cleaner drying on the rims is a no no...
Scrub time:
As you can see, not just the face of the rims gets cleaned. You've gotta get deep in the barrels and man this thing had some DEEP barrels! My brush was just long enough to reach the back.
Gotta get in between the tight spots too...
Note the multiple brushes in the bucket. All were needed and all were used.
Small brush for lug nuts and calipers
Some spots took a couple of applications but...hey, they turned out pretty good don't you think?
Next we did a prep wash on the car. Pressure washed the loose dirt free (didn't help much, most of this was baked on), then foamed it up and gave it a thorough wash. Pressure washed it again, dried it and then popped the hood and made a discovery! Apparently the dust bowl did not end, it just got swallowed up by this monster engine!
Heres a couple quick foam pics:
(Note in real time i took these pics just before the wash, thus the reason for the visible dirt on the front quarter panels)
This engine is a beast! A freakin sedan that can do 0-60 in under 4 seconds....really? Now THATS a family car! Right now however...it's filthy....
After a very careful pressure wash, followed by spraying APC to small sections of the engine bay at a time, aggitating with several brushes and then rinsing clean....I then applied a dresseding to the engine bay and spray wax to all painted surfaces. Here is our transformation...
Before from a different angle:
And after:
And of course the head on before was the most explicit in showing the amount of dust that had accumulated:
But the head on after was equally as explicit in showing the beautiful turn around
After wiping down the areas that i had gotten wet with the pressure washer (mainly the quarter panels) we grabbed a few more photos of the swirls/scratches throughout the car, but this time without the layers of dirt.
The clear bra had the worst of it...only so much could be done for it. But we were able to improve it. Now for the actual PAINT:
Oh yeah, it was bad.
REALLY freakin bad...
What do you get when you put a black car - use it as a daily driver, take it to the track and add in some dust storms and rain at the same time...You get this:
Well, now we had clean swirls! I should say somewhat clean swirls...because again, before we touched it with a polisher, it had to be squeeky clean...and right now it was rid of obvious dirt but, there was still a noticeable drag to the paint...obviously a clay bar was needed next.
We pulled it into the garage so i could start claying while Dani continued the interior detail.
The clay bar never lies....while this car looks nice and clean in the shade...the clay bar told another story:
This was after doing about half the hood....gross,, seriously gross. If you're detailer isn't claying....they aren't detailing. This is SUCH an essential and neccessary step even on cars that APPEAR clean...that includes brand new ones.
I continued around the car...my sis did the same and as usual we finished about the same time. She then started taping of the trim while i got the polishers ready.
While she finished up with the tape...i started inspecting the paint one last time inside the garage with the door closed and the halogens set up. We always use multiple light sources to view the true condition of the paint...though i think a candle in this case would have shown that this paint was in DESPERATE need of polishing. Here's what we found:
Ouch...
Sun gun on the door:
The Porsche lettering was not looking so good:
Below the window on the door....
Gas tank....
Close up anyone??
Even the pillars were in sad shape:
Up above the door handle
This area here was particularly lovely...
The halogen lights showed the damage quite well too
Can you sayyyyyyyyyyyyy deep...
This picture here pretty much says it all....
So all in all...you get an idea as to the condition of the paint. Deep scratches and THOUSANDS of them....we had some work to do.
After performing a test spot on the hood and making a few tweaks to our technique we were able to pin down our process for this swirled mess. The Flex along with Optimum MF cutting pad and Meguiars 105 followed by Lake Country Polishing pad and 205 yielded a beautiful finish. Some areas took a couple of extra passes with the compounding process, but hey like i said before, thats what we do.
Lets revisit this photo one more time:
We turned this, into this:
Look, its metallic! This paint was a bit tricky to compound in some spots but, we pretty much knew what we had to do. My sis picked up the Griots and followed behind me doing all the polishing while i pushed ahead doing the compounding. Let me tell you something...this car had a LOT of paint and a LOT of area to cover.
), your rep will continue to grow. Now I'm looking forward to a 458 Italia write-up in the near future!
