mikenap
New member
A friend of mine recently talked his Dad into trading his Hyundai Genesis in for this low mileage M Coupe. This is a car I've always had a thing for, so when my friend asked if I could detail his Dad's new-to-him car, I was pretty excited. And I made him a deal...help me from start to finish, learn how to care for it, and the detail would be on me. This M Coupe was in pretty good shape, although it had some repainted panels, rock chips, shoddy touch up in one spot, and one REALLY ugly scratch.
We got a late start on this car, around midday, and only had a few hours to do what we could with it. He mostly wanted to see if I could remove the large scratch......I couldn't. It was fairly deep and wide, so I could only do so much. Even if he'd had touch up paint, the color and metal flake of the car would have made for one really obvious repair. :frown1: We decided due to the color, condition and time-frame, a one-step would be the best course of action.
The car was 3 days from the dealership, so it was relatively clean to begin with. It had decent shine, leftover wax around emblems and panel gaps, and a clean (non-greasy!:woot2
interior.
Process:
Wheels: Sonax FE
Tires and wheel wells: Optimum Power Clean 3:1
Foam and rinse: Meguiar's Shampoo Plus/Dawn
Wash: Optimum NoRinse
Clay: Clay Magic Blue
Clay Lube: ONR at QD dilution
Windows: Meguiar's D120 glass cleaner
Exhaust Tips: Meguiar's NXT Metal Polish (I refuse to spell it "Polysh". That's just stupid. :nono
Polished: HD Uno on Meguiar's MF cutting pad/ GG6 DA/ Meg G110v2
Wheel sealant: Chemical Guy's Factory Sealant (Got on trade, trying to use it up!)
LSP: HD Poxy
Door Jambs: Optimum Car Wax
Tire dressing: Optimum OptiBond 1:1
As it arrived: clean enough, but could use a little work. I apologize for the overcast pics, not much I could do about it.
The scratch! :twitch:
Started with Sonax FE on the wheels
Attacking the iron imbedded in the wheel
Cleaned the fuel filler door with OPC 3:1, then foamed and rinsed the car, and brought it inside for the rinseless wash.
There were some obvious spots where it was repainted. The car read mostly in the 115-130 range, with a couple of exceptions....very high on the resprays (duh) and very low RIGHT at that deep scratch!:faint2: Nothing's ever easy. I would have thought that someone had tried to sand it before, but the edges of the scratch were elevated and rough, so I don't think that was the case. Just bad luck?
Normal
Respray
Lowest point
Sanded with 2k
It wasn't much of an improvement, the flash just makes it appear like it was.
Polished with HD Uno. I chose Uno since time was a factor. Uno didn't dust at all, and I knew I could go straight to Poxy and skip an IPA wipe or post-polish wash. Win-win!
At this point, I had to take the camera away from Sebastian and put him to work! He got the hang of the polishing pretty quickly, and he really helped me get this car done on time.
After polishing, I had Sebastian apply Poxy to the paint while I cleaned up the exhaust tips.
Finally, we were ready for some after shots. We were going mostly for an increase in gloss and shine instead of correction, and unfortunately the camera couldn't capture the improvement very well. In person, the difference was very noticeable. Mostly though, I just love the shape of this car, so I took as many pics as I could!
Thanks for looking!
We got a late start on this car, around midday, and only had a few hours to do what we could with it. He mostly wanted to see if I could remove the large scratch......I couldn't. It was fairly deep and wide, so I could only do so much. Even if he'd had touch up paint, the color and metal flake of the car would have made for one really obvious repair. :frown1: We decided due to the color, condition and time-frame, a one-step would be the best course of action.
The car was 3 days from the dealership, so it was relatively clean to begin with. It had decent shine, leftover wax around emblems and panel gaps, and a clean (non-greasy!:woot2
interior.Process:
Wheels: Sonax FE
Tires and wheel wells: Optimum Power Clean 3:1
Foam and rinse: Meguiar's Shampoo Plus/Dawn
Wash: Optimum NoRinse
Clay: Clay Magic Blue
Clay Lube: ONR at QD dilution
Windows: Meguiar's D120 glass cleaner
Exhaust Tips: Meguiar's NXT Metal Polish (I refuse to spell it "Polysh". That's just stupid. :nono
Polished: HD Uno on Meguiar's MF cutting pad/ GG6 DA/ Meg G110v2
Wheel sealant: Chemical Guy's Factory Sealant (Got on trade, trying to use it up!)
LSP: HD Poxy
Door Jambs: Optimum Car Wax
Tire dressing: Optimum OptiBond 1:1
As it arrived: clean enough, but could use a little work. I apologize for the overcast pics, not much I could do about it.
The scratch! :twitch:
Started with Sonax FE on the wheels
Attacking the iron imbedded in the wheel
Cleaned the fuel filler door with OPC 3:1, then foamed and rinsed the car, and brought it inside for the rinseless wash.
There were some obvious spots where it was repainted. The car read mostly in the 115-130 range, with a couple of exceptions....very high on the resprays (duh) and very low RIGHT at that deep scratch!:faint2: Nothing's ever easy. I would have thought that someone had tried to sand it before, but the edges of the scratch were elevated and rough, so I don't think that was the case. Just bad luck?
Normal
Respray
Lowest point
Sanded with 2k
It wasn't much of an improvement, the flash just makes it appear like it was.
Polished with HD Uno. I chose Uno since time was a factor. Uno didn't dust at all, and I knew I could go straight to Poxy and skip an IPA wipe or post-polish wash. Win-win!
At this point, I had to take the camera away from Sebastian and put him to work! He got the hang of the polishing pretty quickly, and he really helped me get this car done on time.
After polishing, I had Sebastian apply Poxy to the paint while I cleaned up the exhaust tips.
Finally, we were ready for some after shots. We were going mostly for an increase in gloss and shine instead of correction, and unfortunately the camera couldn't capture the improvement very well. In person, the difference was very noticeable. Mostly though, I just love the shape of this car, so I took as many pics as I could!
Thanks for looking!
