Well, rude not to.... This is my copy/pasted story on how the paint correction went on this car
Boy was this a tough bugger to cut through. This is my Dad's 50k+ mk5 golf GTI. Always looks nice after a wash, that is until you get up close and personal and just see how absolutely fOOOOked the paintwork is. It's not had any real care at all in those 50,000 miles so I wasn't looking forward to sorting this out today. I had roughly 7 to 8 hours in total so knew it wasn't going to be perfect - as was the fact this was my first time out with the new Kestrel DAS6, armed with the SFX1 pad and the 1 litre bottle of Menzerna power finish.... As you'll see, I later realised I could have done with a harder pad and a harder cutting agent.
Here's a few pics. Excuse any newb errors and bear in mind I was focussing on paintwork and nothing else - nothing done to wheels and other bits apart from during the wash process.
This is what I started with. Kinda clean, but....
Up close it was anything but.
Ar5e end was pretty filthy
Started off just pressure washing it down as I have yet to invest in any snow foam type stuff yet. Just loosened off the worst and did the arches.
Even in just the damp uncleaned paint some reflections were coming through. Car is a 56 plate so not too old.
Following a dry down, it didn't take long to find some serious patches of nasty stuff!
I suspect Dad had dived into a hedge to avoid someone on the narrow Devon lanes down near him. This is the nearside front wing....
Started off with a full claying - On the lower front doors and the boot there was some serious contamination. The paintwork felt really rough before I began this.
After the claying, the roof was starting to show some potential, at least without getting too close...
Another rinse down with the pressure washer
And a swift dry down with the microfibre. Got this shot of a timber pile on the drive. Shows clearly some work to do on that door even from this distance.
So, it was on with the blue masking tape.... Never done this before so was having some good fun applying it to ensure no black rubber bits were exposed! An awful lot of black plastic bits on the car. Both sills and lower part of back bumper too.
Back taped up
Then it was on to machine polishing. I took this shot after some initial passes - and was a little shocked at what was still evident using the sunlight....
My first try at a 50/50. The angle of the camera I think over-does how well the right hand side came up. It was an improvement but not perfect at all.
After a while and some practise I was starting to see some good reflections coming up. This is one of the gear I was using whilst I was on one of my many "fruit barley" breaks. Was not easy work.
This is a bit of a rubbish shot with a rubbish camera, but the bit of the door to the right was as bad as the yet to be done part of the other door on the left.
The roof was starting to come up real nice.
One of my better bits of repair. This is the B pillar trim (painted) before I started polishing it.
And this was it when I was fairly happy to move on to something else.
Even the rather initially rough nearside wingmirror was starting to come up nicely.
The offside edge of the bonnet before I started attacking it
After the first go at it
And finally I was happy with it (sun being slightly hidden does emphasise a little too much the improvement....)
The bonnet overall once I'd finished working on it.
I thought now I would back away and get some shots. After I removed all the blue tape and went over it again with a microfibre to ensure clean and dust free. Finally it was on with a single coat of collinite 476s. I only did the one as I felt once I'd got some tougher pads and gunk, I would be back again to sort out the paintwork that didn't come up totally A1.
Once I was happy enough with it, I slapped on some tyre shine as a quick fix to the grey tyres, and nipped up to the local part of Dartmoor to get some moody shots.... I tried to get reflections of the nearby tors in the paintwork but it wasn't easy.
To conclude: A tough first lesson that has drilled in to my head some interesting things to remember for the future; Mainly the fact that newer VAG cars have some of the toughest paint around!!! :lol::buffer:
Yup.... Clearly the roof needs another going over later on some time!
