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Been a bit of an unusual few months. I rent space in what was once a car dealership. The current owner of the building has a few cars of his own and rents space to folks who store their cars.
As an old dealership, there is a front display area with plenty of glass facing a main thoroughfare of the town. Well one night someone thought it would be interesting to toss a 40 oz beer bottle through one of the plate glass windows.
The bottle and some of the glass of the plate glass window traveled far enough into the building to hit a Ferrari Testarossa sitting on the display floor.
You can see the boarded up window in this picture.
The car was damaged and went for a visit to the body shop to be repainted. The gouges were
into the underlying surface below the paint. The door and rear quarter panel were damaged.
During this strange series of months, I got to detail this Corvette. Unfortunately, it took several months to complete as the owner wanted to take the Vette on vacation to Florida and when he returned he wanted to have some vinyl stripes installed and the installers had the vehicle tied up for a a couple of months. So for me it took several months from start to finish. Due in part to the building getting flooded.
To fill in the time waiting for the Vette to return, this GT came in for a make over.
Of course, I can never refuse a black car. And this one was a mess, but turned out just fine.
Needing to fill my time waiting for the Vette, I took on this white car. Of course it looked fine upon initial inspection, but I soon found out it had multiple visits to a spinning brush car wash. The rear tailgate was
a mess of swirls nearly the size of scratches. The rear window wiper seems to direct the spinning
brushes along the same path each time the car is run through the wash. So after time you
end up with parallel grooves from the repeated action of the brushes.
Next came the flood water. Here the water is creeping into the building and eventually fill the place
with three feet of water.
The story is here:
After the waters receded, there is left a layer of mud. Darn slippery to walk on for sure. This
picture shows the 1/4 to 1/2 inch of mud on the floor.
So after spending a few days high pressure washing, the building it finally inhabitable. It took
a couple of days to reorganize everything that had been moved out of the building or moved up into the air to avoid being ruined in the muddy river water that flooded the building.
The Audi was delivered dirty, which is fine as I usually wash the dickens out of the car when they arrive.
Generally I begin with the wheels, spending about 15 to 20 minutes per wheel and wheel well. The owner had just purchased this car used and this was the first time it had been detailed by him and perhaps the previous owner too.
I used a product new to me, part of the Dub line of Mequiar's products. Worked great removing all the gunk collected in the barrels of the rims. Goes on green and turns red as it dissolves away the gunk.
After washing, the extent of the neglect was fairly obvious.
The arrow shows the reflection of my hand holding the camera. That is NOT a defect in the paint.
Besides the swirls, there was water spotting everywhere. A stubborn water spotting. The windows were clayed and then polished with a hard 4" foam pad using Meguiar's Spot Remover. Using hard pressure, fast machine speed and slow arm movements, the spots relented and finally disappeared. The glass was then cleaned with Meguiars glass cleaner.
Forgive this unrelated photo, but I wanted to show using Super Soap in a foaming attachment on my high pressure washer. The black Audi was washed twice. In addition, each wheel is cleaned with a variety of brushes from a bucket of Super Soap. The car is high pressure rinsed to begin with and then washed, then rinsed and washed again and rinsed again. I have an undercarriage attachment for my high pressure washer and third and last rinse is done under the car.
The car had some bonded contaminates and as you can see a little tar in the lower rocker panels. The darker areas are from the tar. The lighter contaminates are from the side of the car.
This is a photo of the window trim and there is a discussion here about the problems with it.
On the right you see the swirling before I started in with Correction Compound and Microfiber DA pad on a Flex 3401 buffer.
I started being fairly aggressive in the test area, but saw some hazing I wanted to avoid. So I eased up just a bit and combined some M105 with the Correction Compound on some tough areas. This photo is before I used the Microfiber Polish on a MF DA polishing pad.
The metallic paint looked pretty good before even polishing it with the Meguiar's polish, as this photo before polishing shows.
Several minor defects were found, some corrected and some not. If I could feel it with my fingernail, I just tried to minimize it a bit and move on to something else.
As we all know, near door handles is usually a treasure trove of swirls. This Audi was the same way with some defects I was unable to correct. Either too deep or too close to an edge or other obstruction to prevent the used of a buffer.
The was just a scuff that disappeared when it saw the MF DA pad coming after it. Not much effort to remove it.
Here you see my buffer cord running over the edge of the rear bumper. Audi would have been wise to put a guard of some kind here. The golf clubs, groceries and whatever else was put into the storage area did a number to the bumper. I told the owner I would minimize it a much as possible, but I don't like getting carried away on plastic bumpers. They don't dissipate the heat of buffer and I don't with to burn the paint off bearing down on a buffer to chase after what in some cases are deep scratches.
The rear lift gate always presents the challenge of obstacles everywhere and no nice large areas to run a buffer. So I masked off and used a 3" MF DA compounding pad on a Porter Cable buffer.
After the car has been completely buffed using Correction Compound, it was polished using Meguiar's MF DA Polish. I considered just using M205 on a black foam pad, but used the MF instead. I was a little aggressive with the polish running it at 4.5 on the Flex for a couple of passes and then slowing it down to 3 for the final couple of passes.
The car was waxed using Meguiar's Ultimate Wax - Liquid on a 3" foam pad on a Porter Cable running at speed 3. There was plenty of hand work on the front, rear and top of the car, plus around the mirrors and door handles.
The rims cleaned up nicely and I waxed them with a liquid wheel wax from Surf City Garage. It's a synthetic intended for rims. Goes on like most wax and removes easily. Not sure how long it lasts. Not enough experience with it to say. Picked it up at Pep Boys in Chicago, nothing like it available locally.
Due to some time constraints, I enlisted the help of my wife. I wanted to impress the owner, so she cleaned the interior. I usually perform a closed door detail, meaning I don't do any inside work, just polish and make the exterior look good. She cleaned the windows, vacuumed the seats and carpet and wiped down all the hard interior parts with Meguiar's Interior Detailer. We did not clean, nor condition the leather seats. If had the time, I would have dressed the tires. Owner was fine with the result and thought the clean rims would suffice.
I work slow, so this represents two and half days of work. Got the car at noon the first day and worked until the car was fully washed. Next day spent way too much time fussing about the window trim and cleaning water spots off the glass. Most of the rest of that day was spent compounding. Final day machine polished and waxed and cleaned glass, waxed wheels and cleaned interior. Normally I use up three full days for a project like this. A slow, old guy and my routine is pretty fixed.
As an old dealership, there is a front display area with plenty of glass facing a main thoroughfare of the town. Well one night someone thought it would be interesting to toss a 40 oz beer bottle through one of the plate glass windows.
The bottle and some of the glass of the plate glass window traveled far enough into the building to hit a Ferrari Testarossa sitting on the display floor.
You can see the boarded up window in this picture.
The car was damaged and went for a visit to the body shop to be repainted. The gouges were
into the underlying surface below the paint. The door and rear quarter panel were damaged.
During this strange series of months, I got to detail this Corvette. Unfortunately, it took several months to complete as the owner wanted to take the Vette on vacation to Florida and when he returned he wanted to have some vinyl stripes installed and the installers had the vehicle tied up for a a couple of months. So for me it took several months from start to finish. Due in part to the building getting flooded.
To fill in the time waiting for the Vette to return, this GT came in for a make over.
Of course, I can never refuse a black car. And this one was a mess, but turned out just fine.
Needing to fill my time waiting for the Vette, I took on this white car. Of course it looked fine upon initial inspection, but I soon found out it had multiple visits to a spinning brush car wash. The rear tailgate was
a mess of swirls nearly the size of scratches. The rear window wiper seems to direct the spinning
brushes along the same path each time the car is run through the wash. So after time you
end up with parallel grooves from the repeated action of the brushes.
Next came the flood water. Here the water is creeping into the building and eventually fill the place
with three feet of water.
The story is here:
After the waters receded, there is left a layer of mud. Darn slippery to walk on for sure. This
picture shows the 1/4 to 1/2 inch of mud on the floor.
So after spending a few days high pressure washing, the building it finally inhabitable. It took
a couple of days to reorganize everything that had been moved out of the building or moved up into the air to avoid being ruined in the muddy river water that flooded the building.
The Audi was delivered dirty, which is fine as I usually wash the dickens out of the car when they arrive.
Generally I begin with the wheels, spending about 15 to 20 minutes per wheel and wheel well. The owner had just purchased this car used and this was the first time it had been detailed by him and perhaps the previous owner too.
I used a product new to me, part of the Dub line of Mequiar's products. Worked great removing all the gunk collected in the barrels of the rims. Goes on green and turns red as it dissolves away the gunk.
After washing, the extent of the neglect was fairly obvious.
The arrow shows the reflection of my hand holding the camera. That is NOT a defect in the paint.
Besides the swirls, there was water spotting everywhere. A stubborn water spotting. The windows were clayed and then polished with a hard 4" foam pad using Meguiar's Spot Remover. Using hard pressure, fast machine speed and slow arm movements, the spots relented and finally disappeared. The glass was then cleaned with Meguiars glass cleaner.
Forgive this unrelated photo, but I wanted to show using Super Soap in a foaming attachment on my high pressure washer. The black Audi was washed twice. In addition, each wheel is cleaned with a variety of brushes from a bucket of Super Soap. The car is high pressure rinsed to begin with and then washed, then rinsed and washed again and rinsed again. I have an undercarriage attachment for my high pressure washer and third and last rinse is done under the car.
The car had some bonded contaminates and as you can see a little tar in the lower rocker panels. The darker areas are from the tar. The lighter contaminates are from the side of the car.
This is a photo of the window trim and there is a discussion here about the problems with it.
On the right you see the swirling before I started in with Correction Compound and Microfiber DA pad on a Flex 3401 buffer.
I started being fairly aggressive in the test area, but saw some hazing I wanted to avoid. So I eased up just a bit and combined some M105 with the Correction Compound on some tough areas. This photo is before I used the Microfiber Polish on a MF DA polishing pad.
The metallic paint looked pretty good before even polishing it with the Meguiar's polish, as this photo before polishing shows.
Several minor defects were found, some corrected and some not. If I could feel it with my fingernail, I just tried to minimize it a bit and move on to something else.
As we all know, near door handles is usually a treasure trove of swirls. This Audi was the same way with some defects I was unable to correct. Either too deep or too close to an edge or other obstruction to prevent the used of a buffer.
The was just a scuff that disappeared when it saw the MF DA pad coming after it. Not much effort to remove it.
Here you see my buffer cord running over the edge of the rear bumper. Audi would have been wise to put a guard of some kind here. The golf clubs, groceries and whatever else was put into the storage area did a number to the bumper. I told the owner I would minimize it a much as possible, but I don't like getting carried away on plastic bumpers. They don't dissipate the heat of buffer and I don't with to burn the paint off bearing down on a buffer to chase after what in some cases are deep scratches.
The rear lift gate always presents the challenge of obstacles everywhere and no nice large areas to run a buffer. So I masked off and used a 3" MF DA compounding pad on a Porter Cable buffer.
After the car has been completely buffed using Correction Compound, it was polished using Meguiar's MF DA Polish. I considered just using M205 on a black foam pad, but used the MF instead. I was a little aggressive with the polish running it at 4.5 on the Flex for a couple of passes and then slowing it down to 3 for the final couple of passes.
The car was waxed using Meguiar's Ultimate Wax - Liquid on a 3" foam pad on a Porter Cable running at speed 3. There was plenty of hand work on the front, rear and top of the car, plus around the mirrors and door handles.
The rims cleaned up nicely and I waxed them with a liquid wheel wax from Surf City Garage. It's a synthetic intended for rims. Goes on like most wax and removes easily. Not sure how long it lasts. Not enough experience with it to say. Picked it up at Pep Boys in Chicago, nothing like it available locally.
Due to some time constraints, I enlisted the help of my wife. I wanted to impress the owner, so she cleaned the interior. I usually perform a closed door detail, meaning I don't do any inside work, just polish and make the exterior look good. She cleaned the windows, vacuumed the seats and carpet and wiped down all the hard interior parts with Meguiar's Interior Detailer. We did not clean, nor condition the leather seats. If had the time, I would have dressed the tires. Owner was fine with the result and thought the clean rims would suffice.
I work slow, so this represents two and half days of work. Got the car at noon the first day and worked until the car was fully washed. Next day spent way too much time fussing about the window trim and cleaning water spots off the glass. Most of the rest of that day was spent compounding. Final day machine polished and waxed and cleaned glass, waxed wheels and cleaned interior. Normally I use up three full days for a project like this. A slow, old guy and my routine is pretty fixed.
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