Detailed 2 Honda Accords, washed, polished and waxed a Cayenne, LX470 and an F-250. Without my son's help, I couldn't have done it.
I had a very nice garage to work in, 30ft high ceilings, wood paneling (cool even on a 92 degree day), ice machine, bathroom and XM radio with 4 speaker along the back wall! As you can see, my son and I had a full line-up!
It would have been a routine day except for the silver Accord. My customer's son decided to wash it last week and for some reason used a huge kitchen sponge with green scratch pad on one side-which he thought was ideal for removing bugs, tar, bee poop, etc. The hood was especially bad, but several areas on the sides, back end and even the roof were seriously scratched and scuffed. Two body shops said the car needed a repaint at a cost of $3000-5000 so I was told to get as aggressive as I wanted since the paint job appeared to be ruined anyway.
I didn't even take before pics of the hood, I wasn't expecting to make much difference based on how horrible it looked. I did get this shot of door pillar, pretty typical (except the hood where he really bore down while washing) of much of the car:
I started off with Optimum Compound and a yellow LC cutting pad, very slow progress, kicked it up to Optimum Hyper Compound and a burgandy Meguiars cutting pad and that seemed to do the trick...and the paint on this Honda definitely isn't the typical soft Honda clear, I got no visible marring at all with an aggressive compound and pad.
Not sure why the first shot is so dark, this is closer to the real appearance after using HC and the burgandy pad:
I got about 95% of the scuffs and scratches on the side of the car completely out, the rest you really have to catch the angle just right to see them. One the hood, I got about 75% out, the rest is mostly hard to see except for two deep scratches. He feels his son can easily live with how the hood looks at this point. The exterior on this car ate about about 90 minutes more than typical, usually the car has been good enough I can go with Prime and AJ.
Final process was Optimum Hyper with a burgandy Meguiars cutting pad, Menzerna 106FF/Clearkote RMG mix with a white LC polishing pad and Meguairs #16 by hand.
I had a very nice garage to work in, 30ft high ceilings, wood paneling (cool even on a 92 degree day), ice machine, bathroom and XM radio with 4 speaker along the back wall! As you can see, my son and I had a full line-up!
It would have been a routine day except for the silver Accord. My customer's son decided to wash it last week and for some reason used a huge kitchen sponge with green scratch pad on one side-which he thought was ideal for removing bugs, tar, bee poop, etc. The hood was especially bad, but several areas on the sides, back end and even the roof were seriously scratched and scuffed. Two body shops said the car needed a repaint at a cost of $3000-5000 so I was told to get as aggressive as I wanted since the paint job appeared to be ruined anyway.
I didn't even take before pics of the hood, I wasn't expecting to make much difference based on how horrible it looked. I did get this shot of door pillar, pretty typical (except the hood where he really bore down while washing) of much of the car:
I started off with Optimum Compound and a yellow LC cutting pad, very slow progress, kicked it up to Optimum Hyper Compound and a burgandy Meguiars cutting pad and that seemed to do the trick...and the paint on this Honda definitely isn't the typical soft Honda clear, I got no visible marring at all with an aggressive compound and pad.
Not sure why the first shot is so dark, this is closer to the real appearance after using HC and the burgandy pad:
I got about 95% of the scuffs and scratches on the side of the car completely out, the rest you really have to catch the angle just right to see them. One the hood, I got about 75% out, the rest is mostly hard to see except for two deep scratches. He feels his son can easily live with how the hood looks at this point. The exterior on this car ate about about 90 minutes more than typical, usually the car has been good enough I can go with Prime and AJ.
Final process was Optimum Hyper with a burgandy Meguiars cutting pad, Menzerna 106FF/Clearkote RMG mix with a white LC polishing pad and Meguairs #16 by hand.
Seems like a really cool guy to be out there bustin' his tail along side good ole Dad.