Miglior Detailing Ltd: Matt Black GTi Beast

Hi guys, thanks for checking out another write up of mine.

This time, we have another Golf Edition 30, but this one is rather a special one! It has a Matt black vinyl wrap and is a true show car. It only comes out for shows and the odd trip to the Nurburgring. Other than that, it’s garaged. It is the owners pride and joy.
The Owner had the car wrapped matt black with the idea it would be easier to maintain than the original paint work. That worked out a little different in reality. With a matt finish, it picked up marks very easily. Finger prints, water marks and light scuffs really took away from the finish. It holds water like a sponge too and dries with nasty marks.
So, the owner brought the car us to be protected or waxes. Now, it’s a bit of a tricky one, waxing a car without making it shiny. So, we used Swissvax Opaque wax that has been specifically developed to not change the appearance in matt paintwork.


Here is the car on arrival.



Straight on with a full wash procedure. All arches, wheels, tyres, bodywork, door shuts, grills cleaned in the usual manner.







The car was then brought into the unit.





The car was full of oily marks and splashes



The vinyl was then cleaned with Swissvax Pre-Cleaner Opaque.



And wiped



This helped a lot to get rid of the oily marks on the car that were so easily picked up. Any traces of tyre shine on the bodywork were easily taken care of with the pre-cleaner.


After the Pre-cleaner was used, we removed the red vinyl on the front splitter on request of the owner.



Now it’s time for some wax.





Here you can see a waxed area before buffing off.



Don’t worry, that will calm down a lot after buffing. After the wax cured and the residue was removed, I went around the whole car again 3 hours later which smoothed out the finish again.


Test section of wax curing



I decided to do a 50/50 on the bonnet



Wax curing





When buffed off, the wax left a very subtle change in depth in the film. Bear in mind, this was before the 3 hour period where I went around the whole car again buffing. The Owner loved the subtle added depth in the vinyl.

Below is another shot of how the wax levelled out the film, making a much more uniform finish. Something which is hard to achieve on a matt surface. Underneath the bump strip has yet to be treated.




Another huge advantage of protecting a matt finish like this is it will be far more capable of repelling water. Matt finishes normally cling onto a silly amount of water. Below is a small splash on the paint.



This will stay like that for about 15 minutes until it develops to a dry stain. Not just a water mark, it really almost stains the finish!

Once the surface is treated, it repels water like it should do!





Beading and a Matt finish are not something you'd normally see in the same sentence!


Once the whole car was waxed, which took a LONG time due to the matt finish; I completed all the finishing items. The exhaust was cleaned with Swissvax metal polish. The wheels were waxed with Swissvax autobahn after being polished with Cleaner fluid. Tyres dressed with Pneu. Arches dress with 303. Any shiny areas (a few are still there!) were waxed with Best of Show.














350+ Horses wanting to play!













Total work time: 9 Hours! It sounds a lot, but the waxing stage in a finish like this is unreal, if you are going to do a proper job!


Thanks for reading guys!

Oh, and fire away with any questions or comments!


Swissvax Detailer: Covering Manchester, Lancashire and North West


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great work !!! thanks for sharing

 

Great work. That is definitely a unique Golf. I like it though.

 

That looks great. Quick question what wash mitt did you use to wash, and what MF did you use to dry the matte vinyl? I would think the matte surface would be very susceptible to marring.

 

my GOD that thing looks good in matte black :worship2:. nice work! now you've got me thinking.....should i start setting aside some money to wrap mine in matte black and grab a pot of opaque....

 

Very nice. Love the shop as well!

 

i saw this write-up a while back on DW, and you're right, the wax does an amazing job of leveling out the finish

a friend of mine is a graphic designer and is currently wrapping his work car in white vinyl, and doing an amazing job with it too

im interested to see how the vinyl holds up against daily use

im tempted to wrap my car in matt vinly for sh!ts n giggles during winter

 

Never saw a matt finish detailed before... looks geat!

 

Great job, Love that subtle depth the wax added

 

awesome!

 

That looks amazing, very nice attention to detail. Great photos as usual.

 

I actually really like that car. Rims really finish it off nicely.

Great Job.

 

wow. i need to seriously take notes. I knew that there had to be some how some way to clean and protect matte finish vehicles. I see them floating around locally and have seen some nice photos of lamborghini's and what not in matte black as well and wondered how they take care of them.

Looks like i need to add a couple of things to my list of products.

The GTi came out looking well better then words can express man. Great great job!

 

Excellent work! I love matte black.

-Kody-

 

Very different detail and informative. Thnx for sharing.

 

Looks fantastic, never would have thought that the GTI would look good in matte black...but my God it does! Excellent work.

 

that car is sex

 

AWESOME Always was wondering how to polish matte finishes

 

the car looks really nice. i noticed the wax on Phil's site and was wondering what the effect would be.
i have matte wheels that need a lot of attention and because of this thread, will likely buy some of that swisswax.

thanks for the pictures.

 

Cheers guys. The Swissvax opaque range is great