Ok, so this is my mums daily driver. It is basically used as a van with various bits of wood etc sitting in it at any given time. It never gets washed unless its by me (rare) or its a TFR car wash.
I had a good look around the car before I started, the paint was dry, no protection, covered in tar even on the upper most parts of the bonnet :doublesho. The part of the bonnet I clayed last week was worked on, but I imagine the claying will take some time come Saturday.
The aim of tonight was to try out a few products to find the best route to go down for the weekend.
So lets start .......
- Plan for wheels is Tardis, Wheel Brightener and possibly some kind of polish, this is a wheel off job for sure.
- Arches will be APC'd and scrubbed while the wheel is off 40,000 miles of built up grime.
- Bought some wire wool especially for this and already have 3 metal polishes, dremel will be needed
General body pics below,
lots of these around the car, mainly from near scrapes with hedges or scrapes with hedges rather.
No your eyes aren't playing tricks, that is some heavy soiling in the middle of "summer" looks more like winter.
Onto the detail ....
So I took the car in to the garage got the halogens on and having had a BMW I knew the paint would be tough, I was pleasantly surprised, the was done with Meguiars fine cut cleaner no.2 and a polishing pad. It took most of the swirls only left with a few random scratches, these will be worked on at the weekend, tonight was just a feeler.
I noticed it needed some refinement and was in dire need of some essential oils, the paint was very dry I think the Halogens actually make it look 'wet' it was infact still not truly Imola Red more like Imola kind of Rose.
So onto a range which I like 1Z, excellent products IMHO, I picked Paint Polish for here as I wanted to refine the finish and add some glaze/oil to feed the paint.
I was happier with this but I thought it still was just sucking up any type of oils very noticeable with Meguiars No.3 Glaze, this product is my preference over no.7 as it doesn't need to be skimmed, whereas no.7 is very wet it is an absolute pest to remove. No pics for that step, as it actually seemed to clean some of Paint Polishes oils so I will possibly try something else on the day.
Now if I ask any member what Glaze would they use by hand to give a glossy result and at the same time, again we are back to feeding the paint, it would be Z HD I imagine. This product is super easy to work, tricky if your not quick enough to wipe it before it dries even on a small panel like this HD was drying very quickly, I only got four passes by hand before it started to clump
You can see in areas even after Paint Polish and No.3 both of which are oil heavy the paint is still wanting more, how greedy
Now I had really chosen my line up for Saturday I decided to call it a night.
So lets re-cap
Fine Cut Cleaner no.2 with Meg's Polishing Pad
1z Paint Polish with Meg's Polishing Pad
Possibly Clearkote's VM and a finishing Pad
HD applied by hand.
Now just before I rolled it out, I used the oiliest Wax I have, Glasur. Slight clue in the name maybe ?
Is there anything wetter than this? I let it sit for a little longer to let the oils penetrate but it still came off a treat.
As close to 50/50 I could get with the angle and the fact that the car was parked tightly to the top of the garage.
Only a few random scratches left, Ill re-evaluate these at the weekend possibly just use a smaller pad and give the tougher areas two passes, instead of one.
All the pictures were taken under forced light conditions so that I could see any defects, not the best to evaluate the gloss as it can wash the picture out, but I am sure this combination will work a treat. The real aim of this detail is to feed the dry paintwork and to get rid of the swirls, the random deeper scratches may stay, I'm undecided. The reason being, I don't want to lift more paint than need be as this car won't be getting traded in, so I need paint in the next 100,000 miles to correct or however long this car lasts.
Thanks for ready Ill update this on Saturday night
Ok so here are the final pics
OK here we go, I had to revamp my product lineup as the sides of the vehicle were horrendous, pretty deep horizontal scratches.
My end choice of products were,
Foam with SSF
Jet wash off
Foam with Hyper Wash and wash as normal, I used this combo so that had a barrier between the mitt and panels as the car was pretty dirty.
Clay each panel with Meguiars Pro Clay and Chemical Guys synthetic detailer.
Menzerna Compound with Lake cutting pad
Menzerna IP with Meguiars Cutting Pad
Menzerna IP with Meguiars Polishing Pad
Menzerna FT with Meguiars Polishing Pad
Menzerna FMJ
Menzerna Acrylic Jacket
Ill probably use Collinite on top as the car is covers around 60 miles a day, its a real bruiser. lol
Depending on what was needed for the defects those were the chosen polishes, funnily enough Meguiars fine cut cleaner with a polishing pad was giving me better results but the sling from it was p*ss*ng me off. Also the fumes are particularly bad, I wear a mask when using that polish.
Example of sling, If I had just done the door and went onto the wing the door would get splattered again so excellent polish but too thin for me.
fifty fifty of the bonnet right hand done, and left hand wing
After hitting it with IP with a polishing pad, so I had to step up to the big guns lol
Typical condition of paintwork, this boot actually was wet sanded, as the two scuffs were just too deep to polish out in a reasonable time.
Remember the boot, scuff still visible but it was deep and there was no way I was polishing that out, glaze anyone lol?
Bonnet
3/4 Panel
And finished, had a well deserved pizza at half time lol and now some banana and peanut butter piece/sandwich.
I had a good look around the car before I started, the paint was dry, no protection, covered in tar even on the upper most parts of the bonnet :doublesho. The part of the bonnet I clayed last week was worked on, but I imagine the claying will take some time come Saturday.
The aim of tonight was to try out a few products to find the best route to go down for the weekend.
So lets start .......
- Plan for wheels is Tardis, Wheel Brightener and possibly some kind of polish, this is a wheel off job for sure.
- Arches will be APC'd and scrubbed while the wheel is off 40,000 miles of built up grime.
- Bought some wire wool especially for this and already have 3 metal polishes, dremel will be needed
General body pics below,
lots of these around the car, mainly from near scrapes with hedges or scrapes with hedges rather.
No your eyes aren't playing tricks, that is some heavy soiling in the middle of "summer" looks more like winter.
Onto the detail ....
So I took the car in to the garage got the halogens on and having had a BMW I knew the paint would be tough, I was pleasantly surprised, the was done with Meguiars fine cut cleaner no.2 and a polishing pad. It took most of the swirls only left with a few random scratches, these will be worked on at the weekend, tonight was just a feeler.
I noticed it needed some refinement and was in dire need of some essential oils, the paint was very dry I think the Halogens actually make it look 'wet' it was infact still not truly Imola Red more like Imola kind of Rose.
So onto a range which I like 1Z, excellent products IMHO, I picked Paint Polish for here as I wanted to refine the finish and add some glaze/oil to feed the paint.
I was happier with this but I thought it still was just sucking up any type of oils very noticeable with Meguiars No.3 Glaze, this product is my preference over no.7 as it doesn't need to be skimmed, whereas no.7 is very wet it is an absolute pest to remove. No pics for that step, as it actually seemed to clean some of Paint Polishes oils so I will possibly try something else on the day.
Now if I ask any member what Glaze would they use by hand to give a glossy result and at the same time, again we are back to feeding the paint, it would be Z HD I imagine. This product is super easy to work, tricky if your not quick enough to wipe it before it dries even on a small panel like this HD was drying very quickly, I only got four passes by hand before it started to clump
You can see in areas even after Paint Polish and No.3 both of which are oil heavy the paint is still wanting more, how greedy
Now I had really chosen my line up for Saturday I decided to call it a night.
So lets re-cap
Fine Cut Cleaner no.2 with Meg's Polishing Pad
1z Paint Polish with Meg's Polishing Pad
Possibly Clearkote's VM and a finishing Pad
HD applied by hand.
Now just before I rolled it out, I used the oiliest Wax I have, Glasur. Slight clue in the name maybe ?
Is there anything wetter than this? I let it sit for a little longer to let the oils penetrate but it still came off a treat.
As close to 50/50 I could get with the angle and the fact that the car was parked tightly to the top of the garage.
Only a few random scratches left, Ill re-evaluate these at the weekend possibly just use a smaller pad and give the tougher areas two passes, instead of one.
All the pictures were taken under forced light conditions so that I could see any defects, not the best to evaluate the gloss as it can wash the picture out, but I am sure this combination will work a treat. The real aim of this detail is to feed the dry paintwork and to get rid of the swirls, the random deeper scratches may stay, I'm undecided. The reason being, I don't want to lift more paint than need be as this car won't be getting traded in, so I need paint in the next 100,000 miles to correct or however long this car lasts.
Thanks for ready Ill update this on Saturday night
Ok so here are the final pics
OK here we go, I had to revamp my product lineup as the sides of the vehicle were horrendous, pretty deep horizontal scratches.
My end choice of products were,
Foam with SSF
Jet wash off
Foam with Hyper Wash and wash as normal, I used this combo so that had a barrier between the mitt and panels as the car was pretty dirty.
Clay each panel with Meguiars Pro Clay and Chemical Guys synthetic detailer.
Menzerna Compound with Lake cutting pad
Menzerna IP with Meguiars Cutting Pad
Menzerna IP with Meguiars Polishing Pad
Menzerna FT with Meguiars Polishing Pad
Menzerna FMJ
Menzerna Acrylic Jacket
Ill probably use Collinite on top as the car is covers around 60 miles a day, its a real bruiser. lol
Depending on what was needed for the defects those were the chosen polishes, funnily enough Meguiars fine cut cleaner with a polishing pad was giving me better results but the sling from it was p*ss*ng me off. Also the fumes are particularly bad, I wear a mask when using that polish.
Example of sling, If I had just done the door and went onto the wing the door would get splattered again so excellent polish but too thin for me.
fifty fifty of the bonnet right hand done, and left hand wing
After hitting it with IP with a polishing pad, so I had to step up to the big guns lol
Typical condition of paintwork, this boot actually was wet sanded, as the two scuffs were just too deep to polish out in a reasonable time.
Remember the boot, scuff still visible but it was deep and there was no way I was polishing that out, glaze anyone lol?
Bonnet
3/4 Panel
And finished, had a well deserved pizza at half time lol and now some banana and peanut butter piece/sandwich.
