Flannigan
New member
Hi everyone. I had a fun detail today...not necessarily due to the car (although I do love WRX's) but more because it was the first full car that I corrected using my Rupes21.
I had detailed this vehicle a couple years ago, but since then it had only been washed a handful of times by the owner, and it hadn't seen a propper detail at all. It was certainly time for it to get some attention.
Here is the condition that the car was in when it arrived. It was filty, and caked with road salt and chemicals all over.
Due to the temperature today, I has planned on doing a rinseless wash inside, but after seeing the ammount of crud on the car I ended up doing a presoak and traditional wash. I soaked it with a mix of Meguiars Hyperwash and APC, and then washed with Meguiars Hyperwash and a Griots MF Pad. I ended up going over the entire exterior a few times to make sure all of the dirt and salt was removed.
After it was clean, I could tell by touching the paint it was in dire need of some claying. I had just received a CarPro USA PolyShave Decontamination Block from Corey, so I decided to test it out. I "broke it in" by claying all of the glass first to make sure I wasn't marring the paint too bad. I have used the Ultima Clay Block a lot, and found that while it does an ok job, it isn't good for heavily contaminated vehicles, so I wasn't expecting much from this clay block. It turns out I was wrong! While this block isn't as aggressive as an aggressive clay bar, it easily removed all of the bonded contaminants from this paint in just a few passes. Now, it did mar this super soft black paint, but I was expecting anything to mar this paint since it was in such poor shape. I loved using this block, and can't wait to try it on another car with harder paint to see how much it will mar it.
Here is how the paint looked after being totally decontaminated. As you can see the paint was fairly swirled, and also had some deeper defects.
The goal of this detail was not perfection, but just to clean up the car and paint and get it protected. I knew I was only going to do one step of correction, so I wanted to make it count. I decided to give the Rupes21 a try on this soft paint, even though I wasn'y yet sure if it would be able to finish without marring. I went through a few normal combos at first (SIP/Tangerine Pad, D300/MF Pad, S40/Tangerine Pad) and all of them were leaving a lot of marring on this paint. So I decided to try a combo I would normally use for finishing, Menzerna 106fa and a green Uber pad. This certainly did the trick for me. It removed about 75% of the defects (all the swirls, but not all of the RIDS) and finished perfectly on this soft and sticky paint. Another great advantage to the Rupes was it cut my polishing time down drastically. I usually work 106fa for 6-9 passes depending on the car, and with the Rupes it was totally broken down and corrected after just 3-5 passes. I'll let the pictures tell the story. This photos were taken after a wipe down with eraser and before the LSP.
I was thrilled with how well this combination (liquid, pad and machine) worked on this vehicle. It was a joy to use the Rupes, and it will be my go to tool for most of my correction in the future.
After the correction was completed I decided to apply Four Star Sealant to the paint for protection. I cleaned the glass with Meguiars Glass Cleaner, dressed the trim with UTTG, and the tires were dressed with Hyperdressing. Here is how it turned out.
Thanks for taking the time to check out my thread. I had a blast getting to know the Rupes, and can't wait to get some more practice with it. Thanks!
I had detailed this vehicle a couple years ago, but since then it had only been washed a handful of times by the owner, and it hadn't seen a propper detail at all. It was certainly time for it to get some attention.
Here is the condition that the car was in when it arrived. It was filty, and caked with road salt and chemicals all over.
Due to the temperature today, I has planned on doing a rinseless wash inside, but after seeing the ammount of crud on the car I ended up doing a presoak and traditional wash. I soaked it with a mix of Meguiars Hyperwash and APC, and then washed with Meguiars Hyperwash and a Griots MF Pad. I ended up going over the entire exterior a few times to make sure all of the dirt and salt was removed.
After it was clean, I could tell by touching the paint it was in dire need of some claying. I had just received a CarPro USA PolyShave Decontamination Block from Corey, so I decided to test it out. I "broke it in" by claying all of the glass first to make sure I wasn't marring the paint too bad. I have used the Ultima Clay Block a lot, and found that while it does an ok job, it isn't good for heavily contaminated vehicles, so I wasn't expecting much from this clay block. It turns out I was wrong! While this block isn't as aggressive as an aggressive clay bar, it easily removed all of the bonded contaminants from this paint in just a few passes. Now, it did mar this super soft black paint, but I was expecting anything to mar this paint since it was in such poor shape. I loved using this block, and can't wait to try it on another car with harder paint to see how much it will mar it.
Here is how the paint looked after being totally decontaminated. As you can see the paint was fairly swirled, and also had some deeper defects.
The goal of this detail was not perfection, but just to clean up the car and paint and get it protected. I knew I was only going to do one step of correction, so I wanted to make it count. I decided to give the Rupes21 a try on this soft paint, even though I wasn'y yet sure if it would be able to finish without marring. I went through a few normal combos at first (SIP/Tangerine Pad, D300/MF Pad, S40/Tangerine Pad) and all of them were leaving a lot of marring on this paint. So I decided to try a combo I would normally use for finishing, Menzerna 106fa and a green Uber pad. This certainly did the trick for me. It removed about 75% of the defects (all the swirls, but not all of the RIDS) and finished perfectly on this soft and sticky paint. Another great advantage to the Rupes was it cut my polishing time down drastically. I usually work 106fa for 6-9 passes depending on the car, and with the Rupes it was totally broken down and corrected after just 3-5 passes. I'll let the pictures tell the story. This photos were taken after a wipe down with eraser and before the LSP.
I was thrilled with how well this combination (liquid, pad and machine) worked on this vehicle. It was a joy to use the Rupes, and it will be my go to tool for most of my correction in the future.
After the correction was completed I decided to apply Four Star Sealant to the paint for protection. I cleaned the glass with Meguiars Glass Cleaner, dressed the trim with UTTG, and the tires were dressed with Hyperdressing. Here is how it turned out.
Thanks for taking the time to check out my thread. I had a blast getting to know the Rupes, and can't wait to get some more practice with it. Thanks!
