Polished Bliss Vs Porsche GT3 + Wetsanding

C

cupra_clark

New member
Well this was my latest job:



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I'd Seen the car the week previous and deliberately kept 2 or 3 days free as i knew this car could prove to be a challenge (plus it was a 80 mile round trip each day) and rich is still busy with other work related commitments :)



"doesnt look too bad though?" i hear you ask!...



look a bit closer and you can see what i saw upon inspection last week:



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And you know they're gonna be bad if you can see buffer trails without bright light even hitting the panel:......



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Anyways, before i could get polishing i had to wash the car. This consisted of the usual 2 bucket method after the car had been foamed and arches treated to APC, with the wheels being washed with normal shampoo and water (didnt wanna risk any wheel cleaner on those mega expensive Ceramic brakes :D). The whole car was then Clayed with an Aggressive Clay Bar after i had removed the larger tar spots with Tar & Glue remover. It was then dried with a Waffle Weave towel.



Arches were dressed outside at this point.



Inside - i taped it all up and got the Halogens on to see exactly what kinda swirls i'd be dealing with, the majority of the car showing moderate to heavy swirling and cob-webbing (doesnt show up so well in the pics as the flake of the paint hides them a wee bit:)):



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The bonnet was the worst though:



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These were proper scratches, you could see they were quite deep even without the light being directly on the panel:



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The car had been seriously neglected by the previous owner and had obviously had some re-spray work done on a couple of panels (these panels were bloody hard!), not that you even had to look at the PTG readings to be able to tell that though, this is the near side back 1/4 showing some rather funky holograming! :rolleyes: :



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As usual, i tried the least aggressive of the finishing polishes with a polishing pad but this didnt really do a huge amount on the hard Porsche paint so i stepped up to the compound @15/1700rpm's and this took care of the defects after a couple of hits.



50/50 shot of the near side front wing:



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near side rear 1/4 before:



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near side rear 1/4 after:



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The Garage i was working in was very damp and subsequently the particular polishes i was using really didnt work very well at all due to the lubricants "clumping up" and drying out far too quickly, this resulted in annoying buffer hop and the panels getting far too hot far too quickly. I'm sure alot of you other Rotary users who use these particluar polishes (i'm sure you know what ones im talking about ;)) will know how frustrating and damn right annoying this is. This is the main reason it took the best part of 3 Days to complete the detail as i was forever trying to keep the polishes at a decent temperature next to the halogens, this wasted alot of time & tried my patience big time too!



anyways, on to the worst bit of the car - the bonnet:



CGT3g.jpg




After 4 hits on the first section with the compound only around 50% of the scratches were coming out. Keith (the owner) was delighted with the improvement but i wasnt happy, it was letting the rest of the car down.



The bonnet had obviously been re-sprayed as there was significant orange peel not consistant with the rest of the car (PTG readings were 140-180 microns so i'm assuming it was a new bonnet that was on the car) so with that and the remaining defects being good enough reasons, i got out the 3000 Unigrit and proceeded to wet-sand the entire bonnet:





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This is where the next problem arose. No matter what pad and polish combination i tried, i couldnt remove the sanding marks, which for 3000 grit is very strange - they normally polish out very easily with little effort.



I eventually had to resort to the strongest of all compounds and a burgundy cutting pad with the rotary and "slow cut technique" @ 900rpms.



This eventually took care of it,and the orange peel was greatly reduced, it was slow going though:



CGT32.jpg






I had initially wanted to sand the spoiler too as it was just as bad as the bonnet but with readings taken with the composite gauge showing between 75-80 microns i'd be rather silly to, so instead i used the PC and the more aggressive of finishing polishes (a couple of hits):



Spoiler before:



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Spolier after:



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Still some scratches left in but you can only do what you can with the paint you're given!



I then final polished via the PC & a finishing pad (i'd given up trying to get the polishes to work with the rotary by this point), HD Cleansed and then fed the paint with Zymol Vintage wax. While this was curing i did the Glass inside and out with HD Cleanse and tidied up a bit.



At this point Rich turned up for a look so he polished the tail pipes and sealed the wheels, the tyres were also dressed:



Tailpipe before:



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Tailpipe after:



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The car was then given a final wipe down with Zymol Field Glaze and then rolled outside for the after pics:



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some inside shots.....



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So all in all, over 20 hours spent on this particular detail, but definitely worth it, even if its for the added re-sale value of the car :)



thanks for looking :)
 
We did a deal for the owner seeings as he is going to let us use the car for website purposes (pics etc etc :) )



Its a good one for the folio :)
 
PM if you would like to know more details, due to the Zymol Contract Rules we cant name any non-Zymol products in our Zymol details :)
 
Amazing! :bow



You ought to be the one charging $5000+ for details, not that other guy in the UK! Your correction skills are incredible...but I bet your heart dropped when you initially had trouble removing the wetsanding marks. :nervous2:
 
I popped in to see Clark on the job just at the point when the marks weren't coming out... and boy was it odd. Never seen anything like it; you wouldn't think any panel that eventually needed a very heavy compound and a full cutting pad would have been marked so badly by 3000 grit. Odd! :D
 
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