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Our final TNOG of 2015....always a mixed emotion kinda night when we close the season, but we had a couple of fun projects to work on and keep us busy.
Our primary project was this 2003 Mercedes SL500 with the AMG appearance package. Brought in by a friend of one our regulars, Alan, this car is a lesson in why you don't loan your car to your ex for a month!
Yikes!
Oh my!
Oh, come on!
It just keeps getting worse!
Stop, I can't take it any more!!
Oh, goody, tons of RIDS, too.
OK, let's give this baby a D114 Rinseless Wash and see what that does for us.
Nice and clean, but boy oh boy do we have our work cut out for us tonight!
A bit of a shock to find the paint didn't feel all that rough, and even the C2000 Blue Mild Clay wasn't picking up a ton of gunk.
Time for our first test spot. A quick check of the ID sticker in the door told us that this car did not have the Ceramiclear paint, and prior experience with this generation SL tells us that the paint may well be fairly haze prone, although relatively easy to correct. While that past experience with different cars is no guarantee of paint hardness/softness/brittleness, etc it is something at least to consider. As luck would have it, it did correct pretty easily but noticeable haze was created. Below is the first test spot using D300 on a microfiber cutting pad with the MT300. The swirls are totally gone but the RIDS remain. That's to be expected, given the severity of these RIDS.
We then tried "Plan B", M100 on microfiber with the MT300 and we got much better overall defect removal. We really had to slow down our speed across the paint, but the tool speed held at 5800OPM with moderate to heavy pressure. Below you see the untouched paint at the bottom, and the upper right side is after just M100/microfiber and it shows a lot of haze. The upper left side is after a very quick follow up with M205 on yellow foam. Now we're talking! So our plan of attack was just that; M100/DMC5 followed by M205/DFP5.
We put the team to work on the SL and then rolled this little beauty into the garage! What does this paint need, you may be thinking?
Well, it's certainly not even close to terrible, but it can also look a lot better. Obviously there's no need to attack this with an aggressive approach at all, so we took a couple of options to the owner and gave them a shot.
Nick first hit it with M205 on yellow and then black foam to compare the difference. We then decided to give White Wax a try. Yes, White Wax on black paint - we figured that the cleaning power of White Wax, coupled with the already really good condition of the paint, would give the owner a possible true one step to bring the car to his desired finish. As it turns out, White Wax was a rock star on this Bug, delivering an outstanding finish in a single go. To quote the owner, "I've never seen the paint look this good before!"
You may recall that about a month ago we had this killer '32 Ford Coupe in the garage for a TNOG, prepping the car for the annual Cruisin' For A Cure car show here in Orange County. That show draws some 3000 show cars, and Meguiar's has a very large presence. Unbeknownst to the selection committee at the time, Gary and Kathy's car was chosen as a Meguiar's Top 15 of the event and invited to park and display inside with us. To show their appreciation for our team's hard work, Kathy baked some truly fantastic brownies and brought them down for the crew as a thank you. It was very rewarding for everyone involved to learn that their hard work paid off so well!!
But it's back to work on the SL.... get crackin' boys!!
Nice contour work with the MT300!!
Sometimes a smaller pad just makes life easier in tighter places.
A little side project on a Hyundai Sonata that was attacked by some sort of chemical spill while long term parked at a local airport while the owner traveled abroad. This type of chemical etching can be really nasty, especially since there's no way of telling exactly what the chemical was and how bad the damage might actually be. This was an oddball situation since there is a small semicircle of deep cuts in the paint that almost resemble the marks that occur when an egg is thrown at a car. The staining does indeed look as though something was thrown at the car and created a spatter pattern moving away from those cuts in the paint. But really, who knows what happened....we just want to fix it.
A couple of passes with M100/DMC5 and it looks fantastic! Unfortunately, the cuts in the paint are going to remain as they are down to the primer and only touchup paint will fix it. Still, you now have to go looking for those cuts instead of having a huge stain jumping out at you, so it's all good.
Another side project, and this one was actually worse than the SL! Here's a lesson in why you should never, ever let you car get repeatedly doused by sprinklers using unsoftened water. This little Fiesta was bombarded over a period of a full year before the owner attempted to do anything about it. C2100 Aggressive Red Clay didn't touch this, and the surface actually felt like armadillo skin (not that I've ever felt an armadillo, but it looked like one so I'm guessing the texture was pretty similar!!).
M100/DMC5 (sort of the theme for the night, right?) did a pretty good job of removing the bulk of the surface material, but we were still left with nasty pitting and etching in the paint that wasn't going to come out without wet sanding the entire side of the car. Even then, some of it looked so deep that we hold out little hope for a full repair even when going that route.
Repeated passes with M100/DMC5 really did make a huge improvement though!
Close up, this is what's left after compounding - some haze in the paint which is simple enough to remove with a bit of M205 on foam, but the etch marks are really bad.
Magnified 60x we see this - really nasty below surface damage.
But the crew working on the SL can be very proud of their work. While not perfect (that would require many, many more hours of work) the owner was overjoyed!
A job well done, guys, and a great way to close out the 2015 TNOG season!!!
Our primary project was this 2003 Mercedes SL500 with the AMG appearance package. Brought in by a friend of one our regulars, Alan, this car is a lesson in why you don't loan your car to your ex for a month!
Yikes!
Oh my!
Oh, come on!
It just keeps getting worse!
Stop, I can't take it any more!!
Oh, goody, tons of RIDS, too.
OK, let's give this baby a D114 Rinseless Wash and see what that does for us.
Nice and clean, but boy oh boy do we have our work cut out for us tonight!
A bit of a shock to find the paint didn't feel all that rough, and even the C2000 Blue Mild Clay wasn't picking up a ton of gunk.
Time for our first test spot. A quick check of the ID sticker in the door told us that this car did not have the Ceramiclear paint, and prior experience with this generation SL tells us that the paint may well be fairly haze prone, although relatively easy to correct. While that past experience with different cars is no guarantee of paint hardness/softness/brittleness, etc it is something at least to consider. As luck would have it, it did correct pretty easily but noticeable haze was created. Below is the first test spot using D300 on a microfiber cutting pad with the MT300. The swirls are totally gone but the RIDS remain. That's to be expected, given the severity of these RIDS.
We then tried "Plan B", M100 on microfiber with the MT300 and we got much better overall defect removal. We really had to slow down our speed across the paint, but the tool speed held at 5800OPM with moderate to heavy pressure. Below you see the untouched paint at the bottom, and the upper right side is after just M100/microfiber and it shows a lot of haze. The upper left side is after a very quick follow up with M205 on yellow foam. Now we're talking! So our plan of attack was just that; M100/DMC5 followed by M205/DFP5.
We put the team to work on the SL and then rolled this little beauty into the garage! What does this paint need, you may be thinking?
Well, it's certainly not even close to terrible, but it can also look a lot better. Obviously there's no need to attack this with an aggressive approach at all, so we took a couple of options to the owner and gave them a shot.
Nick first hit it with M205 on yellow and then black foam to compare the difference. We then decided to give White Wax a try. Yes, White Wax on black paint - we figured that the cleaning power of White Wax, coupled with the already really good condition of the paint, would give the owner a possible true one step to bring the car to his desired finish. As it turns out, White Wax was a rock star on this Bug, delivering an outstanding finish in a single go. To quote the owner, "I've never seen the paint look this good before!"
You may recall that about a month ago we had this killer '32 Ford Coupe in the garage for a TNOG, prepping the car for the annual Cruisin' For A Cure car show here in Orange County. That show draws some 3000 show cars, and Meguiar's has a very large presence. Unbeknownst to the selection committee at the time, Gary and Kathy's car was chosen as a Meguiar's Top 15 of the event and invited to park and display inside with us. To show their appreciation for our team's hard work, Kathy baked some truly fantastic brownies and brought them down for the crew as a thank you. It was very rewarding for everyone involved to learn that their hard work paid off so well!!
But it's back to work on the SL.... get crackin' boys!!
Nice contour work with the MT300!!
Sometimes a smaller pad just makes life easier in tighter places.
A little side project on a Hyundai Sonata that was attacked by some sort of chemical spill while long term parked at a local airport while the owner traveled abroad. This type of chemical etching can be really nasty, especially since there's no way of telling exactly what the chemical was and how bad the damage might actually be. This was an oddball situation since there is a small semicircle of deep cuts in the paint that almost resemble the marks that occur when an egg is thrown at a car. The staining does indeed look as though something was thrown at the car and created a spatter pattern moving away from those cuts in the paint. But really, who knows what happened....we just want to fix it.
A couple of passes with M100/DMC5 and it looks fantastic! Unfortunately, the cuts in the paint are going to remain as they are down to the primer and only touchup paint will fix it. Still, you now have to go looking for those cuts instead of having a huge stain jumping out at you, so it's all good.
Another side project, and this one was actually worse than the SL! Here's a lesson in why you should never, ever let you car get repeatedly doused by sprinklers using unsoftened water. This little Fiesta was bombarded over a period of a full year before the owner attempted to do anything about it. C2100 Aggressive Red Clay didn't touch this, and the surface actually felt like armadillo skin (not that I've ever felt an armadillo, but it looked like one so I'm guessing the texture was pretty similar!!).
M100/DMC5 (sort of the theme for the night, right?) did a pretty good job of removing the bulk of the surface material, but we were still left with nasty pitting and etching in the paint that wasn't going to come out without wet sanding the entire side of the car. Even then, some of it looked so deep that we hold out little hope for a full repair even when going that route.
Repeated passes with M100/DMC5 really did make a huge improvement though!
Close up, this is what's left after compounding - some haze in the paint which is simple enough to remove with a bit of M205 on foam, but the etch marks are really bad.
Magnified 60x we see this - really nasty below surface damage.
But the crew working on the SL can be very proud of their work. While not perfect (that would require many, many more hours of work) the owner was overjoyed!
A job well done, guys, and a great way to close out the 2015 TNOG season!!!
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