Hello,
Here we have an Audi a3 in a really bad way. The paint on this was such a state, with an array of defects to tease and frustrate me over the next 3 days! Most will recognise this to be toms car! ;)
I started with the usual pre detail prep of the car:
Snow Foam left to dwell for 5-8 minutes.
Washed via 2BM then rinsed
Alloys and arches cleaned with Bilberry and Meg’s super degreaser (arches).
The car was then clayed with Meg’s mild clay. There were some really stubborn bits on the car, which needed aggressive clay mainly around the rear of each wheel, which was expected. Another added complication was overspray on this car. It seems somebody has painted there fence near to this car at some point. It had brown fence paint spots all over, probably from one of those cuprinol sprayers. Needless to say I wasn’t laughing like on their advert, trying to get it off. It took me more than an hour just to get all the tar, paint and sap off the car.
Then the car was rinsed down again and dried off with a waffle weave microfibre, and rolled the car into the unit.Under the lights, the car showed its true colours. With a vast array of every defect you can think of, it certainly was going to be a long one.
Queue near endless photos of near cringe worthy paint...
I wont bore your with hundreds, but all the car was like this.
I took some paint readings and discovered the car had probably been repainted fully. There were readings between 250-280 all around the car, whereas the door jambs were reading a normal 110-120.
The bonnet and wings were reading nearly 340 in most places, so might have been painted since the respray.
The customer wanted a near 100% correction on this; bearing in mind the respray it was going to be a challenge.
Onto the correction
I started on the bonnet with a yellow 3m cutting pad and 3M Perfect-it III Extra Fine Compound.
This got rid of the marring and many of the lighter swirls, but there was still an awful lot of Random Deep Scratches (RDS's) sticking around.
I gave it another hit with the same combination but it still didn’t do much to the RDS's, although it gave a good LSP ready finish.
I tried adding a little Fast Cut Plus to the yellow pad, along with some Extra Fine compound, but again, no joy.
Then I moved onto the Green 3M cutting pad and fast cut plus. A combination I rarely use other than on localised trouble areas.
This gave me a much bigger improvement in the RDS, but it obviously it left its own marks.
So I found a winner for the RDS's. It just meant it was going to take a while to do a full correction as id be going round the car with Fast cut plus then Ultrafina/Extra fine compound.
I made my way around most of the car and achieved great result with the FCP. It was only when I got back onto the bonnet and wings I had a bit of a problem. After 2-3 hits, I was struggling to get any further with a correction.
There was still a few RDS hanging around, and they were not up for moving! After a think and a chat, I came to the conclusion there were marks under the lacquer. This was a shame, but for a car with a questionable paint history, it was inevitable that 100% correction was out of the question.
That’s not to say it looked shabby, the turnaround from how it arrived was still fantastic.
Once I knew I had a FCP cut and a Tidy up after that, I moved into top gear and left the camera on the shelf for quite a while. Here are some more pictures
So, once was the FCP was out of the way, the car was pretty dusty so I dusted it down and changed some of the masking tape to avoid any of the FCP being dragged back onto the paint.
So onto a new yellow cutting pad with Ultra fina to remove the hologramming and slight trail marks left by the Fast cut plus with the cutting pad. The Ultrafina did next to nothing due to how hard the paint was! So I changed to extra fine compound.
This turned out to be perfect, and with careful jewelling it on the slow down, the paint came out perfect for a Last Step Product.
The lights were also done with Extra fine compound
So after the extra fine compound, the car was dusted down, and cleaned up. Then ISP (isopropyl alcohol) wipe down to ensure the best possible adhering of the LSP.
The LSP of the day was to be Zaino Z5 with ZFX. 3 coats of this with Z6 between coats and a final wipe down with Z8 will make this baby shine!
And shine it did, here are the pics!
Between the coats drying I:
dressed the arches with 303 Aerospace protectant.
Cleaned the exhaust with #00 wire wool and Autosol.
Cleaned the windows with megs window cleaner
Dressed the plastics and lights with some Zaino Clear seal which worked really well
Sealed the rather nice BBS CH alloys with Zaino Clear Seal too
I also Applied A hydrophobic coating to the windscreen to ensure wiper free driving on wet motorways!
the alloys were dressed with megs endurance gel, the customer used this before and prefers it to Swisswax Pneu.
More pictures
Total work time 20 hours!
Favourite shot:
Thanks for reading
Jay
Miglior Detailing
